History of the Candle, Research Paper Example

A couple desperate to have a baby went to their priest and asked him to pray for them. “Next week I am going to Rome and while I am there I will light a candle for you,” he replied.

Three years later the priest returned to his parish and went to see the young couple’s house and found the wife to be pregnant and busy attending to two sets of twins. The priest felt very elated and asked the girl where her husband was so that he could congratulate him.

“He has gone away for a while,” came the harried reply.

“Where has he gone?” asked the priest.

She replied, “To Rome, to blow the damn candle out!”

 Most of us probably take candles for granted, but they are a part of every aspect of our lives, even though we may not realize it. We blow them out to celebrate birthdays, we light them to honor the departed. As the joke I just told reminds us, we burn candles when we make entreaties to God, and we also count on them simply to provide light when the power is out. Some of us may have even made candles as a craft project in school, or maybe bought a pretty scented candle for our Mother or girlfriend or wife.

So candles are a part of our lives, but what do we know about them? When were they invented? How were they invented? Where were they invented? And who invented them?

Candles have been around for thousands of years. The first century Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang (Kin Shee Wong) was buried with candles made from wax squeezed from a particular insect. The Japanese made candles from whale oil. In India, candles were made from wax extracted from boiling cinnamon (these were probably the first scented candles!). The Egyptians made candles from animal fat, and the Eskimos discovered a fish that was so rich with oil that it could be run through with a wick and burned as a candle. Can you guess what they named the fish? That’s right: the candlefish. If something burned slowly, it seems humans would find a way to make a candle from it.

In a way, candles are as old as humankind. Primitive men and women sitting around the fire, cooking the animals they had caught, began to notice that the fat dripping from the burning carcasses would catch fire as it hit the rising flames. Over time, some of these people would have figured out that if they collected this dripping fat –or cut away strips of fat from the bodies as they butchered them- they could burn it and get a long-lasting flame.

The next step was to make primitive lamps and torches, by collecting fat –also called tallow- into hollowed out stones and burning it, or by soaking branches or dried reeds in tallow and setting them ablaze. For the next several thousand years, throughout all parts of the world, tallow would be the main ingredient in candle-making.

Always ahead of their time, the Egyptians are credited with crating the first true candles, though there is evidence that it wouldn’t be long before the same processes the Egyptians used would appear spontaneously throughout the world. The great idea that the Egyptians hit on was to turn the torch inside out –that is, to create a wick. Rather than have a large amount of “stuff” – reeds or branches or bundles of sticks- with wax or fat soaked into it, they began to use large amounts of fat with the “stuff” on the inside. To create a wick, the Egyptians would roll up strips of papyrus (Egyptian paper) and soak them in heated animal fat. As the fat would cool, they would add another layer, and another, and so on until they reached a candle of the desired size.

This method, with minor variations, remained more or less the same for centuries. Evidence of candle use has been uncovered by archaeologists around the world. Bronze and clay candleholders from centuries before Christ have been found everywhere from Egypt to China to ancient Rome. It appears that it was the Romans who developed candlemaking into a serious endeavor, as evidence has been discovered of extensive and elaborate systems for manufacturing large numbers of candles. Though there I some scattered evidence that beeswax was used for candlemaking dating back to several hundred years B.C., tallow remained the primary ingredient in candles until well into the Middle Ages.

It was in the middle of the second millennia A.D. that beeswax became much more common for the purpose of making candles. Beeswax was a much better source for the production of candles, as it burned cleanly and evenly, produced little smoke, and smelled sweet, as opposed to tallow, which created large amounts of soot, smoke, and odor as it burned. Kings and nobleman often had servant shoe sole job was to make candles, both from tallow and from beeswax. Some of the first mass-production techniques ever invented were created for the purpose of making candles, as these candlemakers would hang wicks from a long rod and dip them over and over into the tallow or beeswax to crate many candles at the same time.

Unlike tallow, though, beeswax was expensive. It took a lot of time to gather a small amount of beeswax, putting it out of reach for many people. Because of this rarity, the use of beeswax candles was largely restricted to clergy and nobleman, for use in lighting churches and castles. Candlemaking became a marketable skill, and candlemakers would often go from house to house, using the collected animal fats to craft candles for the homeowners. Tallow remained the most common and popular ingredient for candlemaking for several hundred years, until improvements in the collection of beeswax, as well as the discovery of other ingredients, made wax candles more accessible to common folk rather than just nobility and church leaders.

It was in the early days of American colonization that these new ingredients were discovered. Colonial women found that they could produce a wax by boiling bayberries, and they began to make candles from this wax. Like beeswax, this bayberry wax burned more cleanly and evenly than tallow, and it also smelled much nicer. Despite the advantages of bayberry wax, it was difficult to collect, and so it too remained a less-than-common ingredient in candles.

The next “breakthrough” in candlemaking was the discovery of spermaceti, a waxy substance found in the heads of sperm whales. Whaling was a burgeoning industry in the 18^th Century, and large quantities of spermaceti became available for sue in candles. Though it was animal-based, it had many of the same properties of beeswax and bayberry wax, and it soon led to a boom in the candlemaking industry.

It was in the 19^th Century that candlemaking really took off. In the early 1800s, a French chemist named Michael Chevreul found a way to extract stearic acid from animal fats. This stearic acid was used to create a new type of wax from tallow that avoided all of the drawbacks associated with burning animal fats. It was hard, it burned cleanly, and it was relatively odor-free. Soon after, a machine was invented that allowed candles to be mass-produced, and soon they were, for the first time, inexpensive and widely available to almost everyone. Candles became hugely popular as a means to light homes and businesses, and remained so for decades, until the invention of the electric light bulb.

Despite the fact that we no longer need candles for lighting (unless the power goes out, of course) we still use them for rituals such as birthdays, where we place them in birthday cakes. The roots of that tradition actually date back to the very early days of candles, in ancient Greece. Followers of Artemis, the moon goddess, would make offerings of cakes topped with candles to represent the light of the moon, and leave them on the temple steps. Though the worship of Artemis eventually died out, the tradition of putting candles in cakes remained, and was adapted over time to become the tradition we know today. And though we now have electric lights, the tradition of lighting candles in churches and other places of worship remains with us today. Electric light may be efficient, but there will always be something special about the sweet, warm glow of a candle.

References

“About Candles.” History of Candles. National Candle Association, 2010. Web. 7 Jul 2010. <http://www.candles.org/about_history.html>.

“Candle History.” Candles for Me, 2010. Web. 7 Jul 2010. <http://www.candlesforme.com/candle-history.html>.

“Candle of Fertility.” Candle Jokes. www.unwind.com, 2010. Web. 7 Jul 2010. <http://www.unwind.com/jokes-funnies/family/candle.shtml>.

“History of Candles.” Candlecomfort.com. N.p., 2010. Web. 8 Jul 2010. <http://www.candlecomfort.com/historyofcandles.html>.

Lamb, Ellen Clair. “Why do we put candles on birthday cakes?.” Answer Girl. blogger.com, 2007. Web. 8 Jul 2010. <http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-do-we-put-candles-on-birthday-cakes.html>.