Bicycle Lamps
These six guides cover the history, use and identification of antique bicycle lamps, from the first velocipede lanterns of 1868 to the dynamo. Drawing on period advertisements, trade catalogues, patents and surviving examples, they explain how each kind of lamp worked and what its fittings and markings can tell us.
Looking to identify a lamp? Start with Identifying and Dating an Antique Bicycle Lamp.
The six guides
1. The First Bicycle Lamps and Lighting Law, 1868–1900
The earliest dated lanterns appear in France in 1868. By May 1869 two Paris firms were advertising lamps of their own. This guide covers those first lamps, what they could actually do, and the British and French rules that made a light compulsory.
2. Bicycle Candle Lamps
A stearin candle sat on a spring that held the flame at a fixed height. The guide follows the four periods in which the format came back, Asp's ventilated double tube of 1897, and a paraffin burner built to drop straight into a candle lantern.
3. Bicycle Oil Lamps
Riders argued for years about which oil to burn. This guide covers those fuels, the hub lamp, Joseph Lucas and the Tom Bowling Lamp Works, the cheap American lamps of the 1890s, and a hurricane lantern sold in a bicycle version in the 1930s.
4. Acetylene Bicycle Lamps
An acetylene lamp makes its own gas, from water dripped onto calcium carbide. The guide explains how that works, who built the first lamp, what carbide cost, and what it took to run and clean one.
5. Battery and Dynamo Bicycle Lamps
Electric light was tried from 1886 and took forty years to become ordinary. This guide covers the Lucas wet-cell lamp of 1888, the first friction dynamos, and the point at which an electric outfit became cheaper than a gas lamp.
6. Identifying and Dating an Antique Bicycle Lamp
Most of these lamps carry a maker's name and little else. The guide goes through brackets, Lucas date stamps, side glass colours, front and rear lamps, and what a patent mark does not tell you.
Sources
Primary: Le Vélocipède Illustré, first year, numbers 1 and 6, April and May 1869; Le Sémaphore de Marseille, June 1868; L'Union libérale, Tours, December 1868; Le Petit Temps, January 1896; Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumers Guide, catalogue no. 104, spring 1897; Montgomery Ward catalogue, 1916; Herm. Riemann illustrated price list, Chemnitz-Gablenz, 1911; British, French and American patents on bicycle lamps, 1869–1917; lamps in my own collection.
Secondary: Peter W. Card, Early Cycle Lighting 1868–1948; Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History; Bernard Mahot, Les lanternes, phares et fanaux; A.R.C.O.M.A., Éclairage : vélocipèdes et motocyclettes; object records of the Industriemuseum Chemnitz and the Heimatmuseum Teltow; American Chemical Society, National Historic Chemical Landmark on calcium carbide and acetylene. Mahot's account of the discovery of acetylene differs from the chemical literature and has not been followed here. The Wikipedia article on bicycle lighting rests entirely on Card, and Hadland and Lessing cite Card in places. Agreement between those three is not independent confirmation.
