Carbide Lamp -Circa 1900 - Sought after rare piece of history

The origin of the artificial lighting unit - A Real interesting bit of History

This Carbide Lamp is was manfactured anytime between 1890 and 1910 and its use was common up until early 1930's - Originates from England - manufactured by Premier Lamp & Engineering Company.

Pieces of Highly flamable Carbide were put to the bottom container and the resevoir above as ffilled with water.The water was set to drip onto the carbide stored below where the resultant reaction caused the acetelyne gas that then escaped under pressure through the lamp jet nozzle thereby creating a extremely bright white flame causing the white light that dependant on the reflector created the length of the light beam.

Carbide lamps were primarily used as bicycle lamps in the Cape Colony and on the discovery of Gold became the only form of light used in mines due to the ultimately most important safety factor of alerting a miner that oxygen was low when the light flikkered or went out due to oxygen starvation. 

There is no reason to believe this lamp would not work as all required parts are still intact.

All it requires is the carbide pellets .