An incandescent gas mantle, gas mantle, or Welsbach mantle is a device for generating bright white light when heated by a flame. The name refers to its original heat source in gas lights which filled the streets of Europe and North America in the late 19th century, mantle referring to the way it is hung above the flame. Today it is still used in portable camping lanterns, pressure lanterns and some oil lamps.
Gas mantles are usually sold as fabric items which, because of impregnation with metal nitrates, form a rigid but fragile mesh of metal oxides when heated during initial use; these metal oxides produce light from the heat of the flame whenever used. Thorium dioxide is commonly a major component; being radioactive it has led to concerns about the safety of those involved in manufacturing mantles. Normal use, however, poses little health risk.
Read more about Gas Mantle: Mechanism, History, Production
Famous quotes containing the words gas and/or mantle:
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)