A NEW LIGHT.

Evening Star, Issue 3871, 21 July 1875, Page 3

A NEW LIGHT.

At a conversazione recently held in Edinburgh (says a London paper) Professor Archer drew attention to a new and very important invention, the Chandor light, which really threatens the lucifer trade with extinction. The apparatus is, in outward appearance, a little tube, three or four inches long, having at one end a revolving button which turns a screw, and at the other a minute angular point of metal, which also revolves, passing over a little orifice in the closed head of the tube. A continuous fuse, formed of a delicate strip of solidified collodion, with a ridge of hardened phosphorus on one of its sides, is slipped into the tube, and, once in position, can be moved upwards with a screw. By the same action which presses the upper end of the fuse against the opening at top the metal point is turned against the phosphorous, and a small portion of the collodion is thereupon ignited. When the apparatus is fixed to a gas burner, only a very transient flash is needed for the purpose of ignition, and not more than a seventieth part of the collodion fuse is in that operation consumed. Where, however, the wick of a lamp Ims to be lit by the same means, a larger proportion of the fuse, the thirty-second part, in fact, is burned. The apparatus is either portable or adapted -to the uses indicated. If a lamp goes out, it can be instantly relighted by the turn of a screw, instead of by opening the case, removing the chimney, and striking lucifer matches, where perhaps, large quantities of straw are lying about. The collodion fuse is so little liable to be affected by damp that it will ignite after having been immersed in water, and its action has never been known to fail. Being encased in a close-fitting chamber within the tube, it cannot burn beyond the requisite point where its duty is discharged, and the cottonwick of invisible spirit of gas “ starts into light, and makes the lighter start.” °