Antique Oil Lamp Burners: Center Chimney Burners, Modern Conversions

Video Transcript

"This is a center chimney burner also. This is used to raise and lower the wick. I don't know if you can see that and the higher you raise the wick, the more flame you are going to get and more light. But you are also going to get more smoke. There was a compromise there. You had to find a way you could live with a certain amount of light. The chimney was also put on top of that burner which would catch the smoke and a lot of the kids jobs back then was to clean the chimneys everyday to get the smoke off from them which was not a easy task. These chimneys would hold the smoke and focus the smoke up to the top of the chimney. So that was the purp9ose for that. So that gives you a good idea of what the burners should have looked like and what we use today to convert. Another example I can show you is a conversion that they use today which is electrified. In this one it is basically the same number one burner that you would see in an old, example right here of the burner. It is the same base and they have electrified it and the nice thing they have done is that now we don't see any more of the early lamps drilled which is a mistake. If you drill a lamp like this, you take the value away. It is not worth anything. So the conversion was a great way to electrify and use and not destroy the integrity of the lamp so this is a great device that they came up to be able to use these lamps everyday the way that we would want to use them today. "