Candle

Stories

During centuries, the Jonc was used to make candles. Split with precaution not to damage marrow of it, it was soaked in vegetable fat or animal which one then let harden. One made it burn in burn-snap rings . In Occident, starting from the Moyen-âge the candle competes with the Oil lamp. The latter with the disadvantage of claiming a constant attention: it is necessary to fill it regularly, cut and go up the wick which carbonizes, to clean the oil which runs. The candle, only made up of a wick surrounded by Tallow of Ox or Sheep, is more practical without being excessively expensive (but it is taxed and oil remains more economic). Less liquid which is reversed, of flame to be adjusted, tank to be filled. But tallow runs and lubricates the fingers, the flame remains yellow and smoky, it is always necessary to maintain the wick which ends up carbonizing.

The Nobility and the Clergé lit with candle S in Cire of Abeille and left to the people lighting to the Suif. The wax candle preserves the advantages of the candle and eliminates the defects from them. But its price in limit diffusion in the highest levels of society.

The word candle appeared in the French language only at the 14th century, drawn from Bugaya transcription in Arabic of the word Kabyle Bgayet, name of a town of Algérie in maritime Kabylie which provided a great quantity of wax for the manufacture of the candles. The candle as such was developed in the middle of the 19th century and is distinguished from the candle because of its raw material and by the use of wicks of Coton braided. Braiding makes it possible the wick to be curved and to be consumed: useless then of the moucher. The poor wretch candle disappears then, and the wax loses of its interest.

In 1783, the chemist Swedish Carl Scheele (1742 - 1786) had, within the framework of its research on the Savon, makes boil Olive oil with Oxyde of Plomb and obtained a substance with the sweetened taste which it had called Ölsüss and which one now knows under the name of Glycérine. In 1823, the chemist French Michel-Eugene Chevreul (1786 - 1889), pushed by this discovery, discovered that in fact the greasy substances combine with the Alcali to form the soap, but that they are initially broken up into fatty-acids and out of glycerin (or glycerol). Chevreul is thus at the origin of the theory of the Saponification. These two elements will be at the base of a massive industrialization of the candle and soap. From now on, soap and wax-producing belong to the same corporation, whose Nantes becomes the capital. Today still, 80% of the French production of candles come from the Nantes area.

The appearance of the solid Paraffin (distillation of the Oil) and of the Stéarine (extracted from animal and vegetable fat) allows from now on the production of candles of better quality.

Operation

The operating principle of the candle uses the phenomenon of self-feed:

A candle consists of a block of wax or paraffin whose center is crossed by a wick, out of cotton for example.

When the candle is lit, the overheated air dissolves paraffin all around it. This molten paraffin goes up along the wick by Capillarité because the fluid paraffin tends to go up along the wick until proximity of the Flamme.

This fluid paraffin evaporates then mixes then with the air and some of its molecules form a fuel gas. This one is burned by the flame, which makes it possible to feed it.

So that the flame is maintained, it is necessary that the temperature of the medium which burns is sufficient.

The flame is extinct when sufficiently strong top is blown because the breath creates a current of cold air which cools the environment of the flame, the wax cooling more quickly than the heat of the flame heats it. The temperature then becomes lower than the temperature of combustion and the flame dies out. This is described in English in the article extinction of the flame of candle

Use today

The candle always constitutes a source of light of breakdown service, but its ordinary uses are not any more about the utility.

It symbolizes the years past on the birthday cakes or is used as decoration of the Christmas trees, with big risks of fire from where its replacement by electric candles which imitate the true ones.

It creates also the intimacy at the time of a dinner to the candles, the restaurant or at home, unless it does not multiply on the glosses and the candlesticks in sometimes approximate historical reconstitutions or receptions.

Its employment is always of setting in the ritual monks (one speaks then about candle) like Christian the Pascal candle and it takes part in the lighting of the ceremonies. Catholic piety is also always user of the candles lit in accompaniment of a prayer, particularly when she is addressed to the Virgin Mary or saints: the gesture to make very largely burn a candle in thanks perdure. The candle is also uses in other religions, the such wiccan. The candles have plusieures properties known as magic according to their color, their odor and their form.

Other uses: auricular candle or Candle of ear.

In medicine

A candle is a medical instrument, in the shape of lengthened cylinder, offering various diameters intended to dilate various natural conduits (esophagus, Urètre, collar of the Utérus for example).

See too

Béjaïa
Calved
, English candle,

External bonds

Origin of the Candle (Candle of Candle)
Manufacture of candles

Nds-nl: Keerse Simple: Candle

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