Which oil to burn was a running argument in the cycling press. Colza gave a bright white light and did not smoke. It was thick, though, and capillary action only worked with a generous, loosely woven wick. Paraffin flowed much more easily, and smoked badly if the wick was set too high. Sperm oil did both and cost more.

Riders also tried whale oil, olive oil and distilled coal oil. One correspondent used olive oil with a piece of camphor dissolved in the reservoir. Sears, Roebuck recommended lard oil for one of its cheaper lamps in 1897, and said it gave better results than kerosene.

Several firms sold oil specifically for bicycles, and some sold a single oil for burning and lubrication both. What the earliest lanterns of 1868 and 1869 burned is not recorded. That period is covered under the first bicycle lamps and lighting law.

The practical drawback was refilling. A reservoir that did not seal properly left a trail of expensive oil behind the rider.

By the middle of the 1890s makers were working on the wind seriously. A British patent taken out in February 1896 by Edward Williams of Chicago sets out the reasoning in full.

The air inlet belongs behind the wick tube, not in front. A head wind coming in at the front is deflected back over the flame. Two semi-circular plates pivot beside the wick, and the rider opens or closes the inlet with them. The inside walls of the flame chamber are curved, so the air runs up past the flame instead of across it. The chamber is as wide as it is tall, to give the air room. Williams also packed cotton into the reservoir above a perforated plate. Benzine and other volatile fuels could then not slosh about under the flame.

In the same specification Williams calls the parallel sprung bracket "the usual" arrangement. That dates the fitting as standard well before 1900.

Cost mattered as much as performance. In April 1901 Frederick Hayden of Belleville, New Jersey patented a kerosene lamp built almost entirely from stamped tinned sheet, with the joints kept to a minimum.

The wick tube was struck from a single flat blank and folded into a rectangular tube with two wings. Bending those wings down locked the deflecting plate behind the flame in place, with no solder. The back of the body was a hollow disc that served as the reflector. The front came off, held by friction alone, with the lens in an open screw ring.

The whole bracket was one length of bent wire. At one end it formed a spring clip for the steering head, at the other a carrying handle. Lamps built this way are lighter and thinner than their British contemporaries, and the front glass is often held by friction.

The Sears, Roebuck spring catalogue of 1897 shows how wide the range was. On one page an oil bicycle lamp ran from 50 cents for the Comet to $4.25 for the 20th Century in aluminium in tandem size. That is more than eight times the price for the same kind of article.

At the top of that range sat the Neverout, No. 83080, at $4.00. It was built of drawn brass throughout and riveted rather than soldered. The kerosene reservoir was insulated and packed with cotton, the wick lock was automatic, and Sears sold the lamp as non-explosive. That insulated reservoir packed with cotton is the arrangement Williams had patented the year before.

The catalogue claimed sixteen hours of burning on one filling. The rigid bracket was reversible and would go on either side of the fork, or on a dashboard. Sears added that the lamp cost more than the average, and that patrons would find it worth it.

The hub lamp clamped into the wheel hub, so it sat low and close to the road. The Salsbury family of London claimed to have invented it, and were still making that claim in advertisements in 1894. The earliest examples appeared in late 1876. Joseph Lucas of Birmingham was filing hub lamp patents from 1878

Lucas, the largest name in British cycle lighting, started at sea. His first real success was a ship's lantern called the Tom Bowling, and he put the name over his shop. The works became the Tom Bowling Lamp Works.

Most Lucas output carries the Jos. Lucas mark. Part of it is stamped T.B.L.W. instead. A lamp with those four letters is a Lucas.

The oil-burning bicycle lamp has a late postscript. Between 1934 and 1939 Hermann Nier of Beierfeld sold its Feuerhand No. 175 hurricane lantern in a bicycle version, the FH 175 F.

The conversion was more than a bracket. A registered design covered a mount for the sprung suspension, pressed horizontally into the air tubes. That mount sat where the glass would have tipped back, so the glass protection cage was left off. A second registered design of March 1934 covered an aluminium reflector with an inset parabolic mirror. It threw the light forward and screened it to the rear. A third covered a small clamp on the tank filler to hold the carrying bail still, because an unused bail rattles on a moving bicycle. The sprung mount was made by Hermann Riemann of Chemnitz.

The candle lantern ran alongside the oil lamp throughout. It is covered under bicycle candle lamps, including the paraffin burner built in candle form to drop into one. The gas lamp that displaced oil from about 1900 is under acetylene bicycle lamps, and the formats that followed under battery and dynamo bicycle lamps. For brackets, Lucas date stamps and glass colours, see identifying and dating an antique bicycle lamp.

Primary: British patent 2,593 of 1896 (E.L. Williams, bicycle lamp); American patent 680,413 of 1901 (F.B. Hayden, stamped sheet kerosene lamp); Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumers Guide, catalogue no. 104, spring 1897; Montgomery Ward catalogue, 1916; German registered designs on the Feuerhand 175 F; 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, for the early history of Joseph Lucas; object records of the Industriemuseum Chemnitz.