ATDTDA (2): Welsbach mantle (49.16)

[Tim Strzechowski]

Up on the stage now was a lectern flanked by a pair of gas lamps with Welsbach mantles, at which stood a tall individual in workmen's overalls (p. 49).
 

Welsbach mantle or Welsbach burner[for C. A. von Welsbach], cylindrical framework of gauze impregnated with oxides of thorium and cerium. When heated in a gas flame, it produces a very bright light because of the incandescence of the oxides. It is now used in outdoor and camp lamps.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0851827.html

http://www.epa.gov/superfund/pics/Welsbach_Lamp.jpg


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, existing gas lights which filled the streets of Europe and North America in the late 19th century, mantle referring to the way it was hung above the flame. Today they are still used for portable camping lanterns and pressure lamps. 

[...]

The modern gas mantle was one of the many inventions of Carl Auer von Welsbach, a chemist who studied rare earth elements in the 1880s and who had been Robert Bunsen's student. His first process used a mixture of 60% magnesium oxide, 20% lanthanum oxide and 20% yttrium oxide which he called Actinophor, and patented in 1885.

The original mantles gave off a green-tinted light and were not very successful, and his first company, which established a factory in Atzgersdorf in 1887, failed in 1889. In 1890 he discovered that thorium was superior to magnesium, and in 1891 perfected a new mixture of 99% thorium dioxide and 1% cerium dioxide that gave off a much whiter light and produced a stronger mantle. After introducing it commercially in 1892 it quickly spread throughout Europe. The gas mantle remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle


Again, one of many ways in which the "light" motif is addressed/explored throughout this section:

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114255&sort=date