The origin of the candle

The candle originated from the torch of primitive times.

Primitive man put fat or wax on bark or wood chips, tied together, and made a light torch.

The wax that appeared around the 3rd century BC may have been the beginning of the candles that we see today.

In the west, there is a period of time, the temple of beekeeping, used for homemade beeswax,

this is mainly because the Catholic thought beeswax is the symbol of a virgin conception,

so the beeswax as pure light, offering on the altar of the church. From the extant literature,

wax in our country produce time is roughly the same as the west,

Japan is in the nara era (710-784) introduced from China this kind of candles,

compared to modern candles, there are many shortcomings of ancient candles.

Li shangyin, a poet in the tang dynasty, had a poem called “how to cut a window candle“.

Why did the poet cut the candle? At that time, candlewick was made of cotton threads,

which stood upright in the center of the flame. Because it could not be burned out,

it had to be cut off at the end of the wick from time to time. This is surely a trouble thing,

in 1820, the French invented three strong bashir column root cotton woven the candle of heart,

make the wick of natural release during burning, end just skip to the flame of the lateral,

thus it can be fully burning. But the candle still needs to be further refined,

its materials are usually a lot of shortcomings of animal fat, the solution to this problem is the scherer.

Between June and July of 1809,

the French family of scheffler received a letter from a textile mill asking him to analyze and

determine the composition of a soft soap sample they had sent. He pondered the letter for a long time,

thinking: to study soap, it seems that you must start with the oil.

In a very simple and simple school experiment,

he studied the various oils that need to be used in the process of saponification.

Through a large number of experiments, the first time he found the fact that in all oil and grease,

regardless of its source, the content of fatty acids were 95%, 5% is generated in the process of saponification glycerol.

Through the study of nature, he clarified the saponification process at the same time he also had a major discovery:

made of oil candles at that time, because there are glycerin, fire with smoke during burning,

unpleasant smells. If you use stearic acid to make a candle,

not only is the flame bright, but there is almost no black smoke and no air pollution.

He told gay-lussac what he had found,

and suggested that they work together on how to solve the problem.

They used strong alkali to saponify the fat, then the obtained soap was decomposed by hydrochloric acid,

extracted stearic acid. It’s a white substance, with a greasy hand and a soft, cheap candle. In 1825,

schaffler and gay-lussac were awarded a patent for producing paraffin wax candles.

The appearance of paraffin stearic candle has ushered in a new era in the history of human lighting.

Later, large oil fields were found in North America,

and large quantities of paraffin wax could be extracted from petroleum.

Therefore, the ideal candle was popularized and popularized all over the world.

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