Auer lamps

Auer lamps defied the competition of electric lighting for a long time, to the last in trains. The writer still remembers how in his childhood the conductor came into the compartments of the trains pulled by steam engines and lit the gas lamps the white mantle surrounding the flame began to glow and the compartment was flooded with... 

Austrian chemist Carl Auer (Ereiherr von Welsbach) invents the Welsbach mantle, tripling the output of kerosene lamps and... 

The carbon filament lamp vAiich was developed in parallel at the beginning of this century was always several times as expensive in use as an Auer incandescent mantle. As a result, this first use of the rare eaurth elements achieved great economic success and thanks to his capabilities Auer von Welsbach played a major role in this worldwide achievement. He was in the position to survive the extraordinarily corplicated and obstinately pursued patent battles. 

Baron Auer von Welsbach, 1858-1929. Austrian chemist and chemical technologist. Discoverer of praseodymium and neodymium. Inventor of the Welsbach gas mantle, the osmium filament electric lamp, and the automatic gas lighter. 

After success, decline followed. The light of the gas lamps was too greenish (presumably owing to the praseodymium content), their lifetime was too short, the raw material was too expensive and rare, and - on top of it - the great rival, electric light appeared. In 1889, Auer had to close down the factory in Atzgersdorf. However, Auer did not lose faith. He continued to experiment in the laboratory set up in his house. 

To people used to candles and parafRn lamps, the long-lasting and odourless light of the incandescent mantle seemed like a miracle. The carbon filament lamp, invented by Edison in 1879, was no serious threat to Auer s light, as the new lamp was very expensive to use. In fact Auer himself started to develop Edison s idea, and in 1893 he was granted a patent for the osmium filament lamp. 

About Auer von Welsbach it must be said that he - as a scientist, inventor and industrialist - improved the living conditions for people of his time. By his achievement with the metal filament lamp he also exerted a great influence on the welfare of following generations. 

Osmium is used as an alloying metal to make soft platinum and palladium hard. The metal is also used to tip gold pen points. It is technically very interesting that a platinum alloy with 25% osmium has very good creep properties at a temperature as high as 1600°C. Because of its high melting temperature Karl Auer used osmium for the first metal-filament lamp. 

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