Looking for the lamp or the tale about Ukrainian Aladdin
When Aladdin was searching for his magic lamp, he couldn't imagine what he would take out from the heart of the earth. As each tale, this one also has a reference to reality, because not a single fairy tale appears from nothing. And no light could burn from nothing but after long and exhausting searching and trials...
The history of getting (as well as refinement, treatment and application) 'the earth blood' – the oil – from the ground, and creating the first kerosene lamp is as exciting and interesting, as mythical Aladdin's 'pilgrimage' is.
The roots
The 'rock oil, running out of stone' and its power was first mentioned in 1534 in the
The official date of oil birth (just as the oil) is considered to be
The time for this came only at the end of the 19th century and it's connected with Jan Zeh's name, Lviv's former pharmacist. Ukrainian Aladdin, a living legend, who took the light out from the underground. The basis of Zeh’s technology is used even today, rated the director of Oil and Gas Research Institute, Professor J. R. Zarubin.
Discoveries and research
As Jan Zeh was a searcher so he was an inventor: in 1853 he applied to the Lviv's government for a patent for the oil chemical filtering, and the record show, that it was not his first invention. Documents of the Austrian and Lviv records inform: 'Invention on the basis of the mountain oil on
At the same time, another name is mentioned – Gnat Lukashevych. Some researchers state that he is connected with the invention of the gas lamp – so, they remind, documents inform… But if someone learn this fact in details, he would see the deficiency of this theory: first of all, he was 5 years younger than Jan Zeh; secondly, contemporaries say he was only an assistant in a drugstore of
At the same time, the first gas lamp appeared and lighted not one victory on the surgical table in the battle for human life. The company of '
Actually the essence of Jan Zeh’s discovery is a rather simple chemical process, as a result of which the oil is refined from impurities: at first, it should be distilled to a special substance, and then is mixed with sulfuric acid. After settling the upper part of substances should be separated and refined with calcium hydroxide and water. The other part of the distillate could be used for lighting lamps, greasing the skin etc.
So, such a rather simple chain of interactions had caused actually revolutionary results. Everything genius is simple, and often the most important things could be found
The other side of the medal
Jan Zeh went on with the producing gas and selling it in Lviv. But as his discovery presented him an acknowledgement, the situation was quite different from his finance wellness: similar
But financial problems were not the greatest in Zeh’s life. Fire not only gives light and warmness. On the 12th of February 1858, a great fire happened in Jan Zeh’s store. It took the life of his wife and her younger sister. After the accident, the researcher left inventions and gas activity and turned back to pharmaceutics.
But life must go on despite everything. Some time passed and Jan tried to arrange his gas business again and renew the family life. The next year his store and yard moved to another street, and the marriage with Miss Oblochynska gave him two daughters… In 1875 Jan Zeh won a competition for
The last records mentioned about Galichina’s
His colleges and the successors of his business Gnat Lukashevych and Adam Bratkovsky had been luckier in their business. Lukashevych provided the same method of oil distillation as Jan Zeh did (but recognising the leadership of his companion in this field). But during the life of
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Millions of years the fire has been a god. After Prometheus’s feat, the clearest heads went on to tame it and to reincarnate its energy for serving people. The “king of nature” drives in the comfortable cars, flies in the Space, warms up or refreshes his house, casts metal and makes a coffee… And at the same time in some lost regions of Africa and Australia, someone went on with offerings and worships of the element. Today the oil is not only energy and progress but also a great power and a cart Blanche, power close to god’s one…
And so we can say that the evolutional process had changed just its form. It the same time the meaning of fire and fuel hadn’t changed since the age in which the first strings of smoke ran under primordial man’s hands after rubbing of the sticks…
Olena Maksymenko