Ignacy Åukasiewicz
Józef Ignacy Łukasiewicz January ( gespr [ wukaɕɛv itʂ ʲ ]; born March 8, 1822 in Zaduszniki; † January 7, 1882 in Chorkówka ) was a Polish chemist and pharmacist. He is considered the inventor of the kerosene lamp.
Life
Ignacy Łukasiewicz was born in 1822 as one of five children of Apolonia and Józef Łukasiewicz. His father had fought in 1794 under Thaddeus Kosciuszko in the war against Russia and Prussia, and came from the Polish gentry. After the family was forced to leave his native Zaduszniki 1830, Łukasiewicz attended from 1832 to 1836, the urban High School in Rzeszów. He then worked as an apprentice in a pharmacy in Łańcut.
After completing his apprenticeship he returned to Rzeszów, where he became politically active in addition to continuing his training and started in 1837 for the return of independence of Poland. On February 19, 1846, he was, however, as a member of the Polish Democratic Society ( pln Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie ), which was directed against the occupation by Austria arrested. Due to lack of evidence, he was, however, released on December 27, 1847 from the prison in Lviv again.
As Łukasiewicz was not allowed to leave by court order Lemberg, he worked there from 1848 to 1852 as an assistant in a pharmacy, but later moved with his employer yet to Krakow, where he began to study at the Jagiellonian University pharmacy. After studying founded in 1854 finally in Bóbrka the world's first mine to oil production. Between 1857 and 1865 he was also build three refineries, with the proceeds of which he in 1863 and 1864 partly the Polish uprising against Russia supported financially.
Early as 1857, Łukasiewicz had married his niece Honorata Stacherska and was in 1858 moved with her and his daughter Marianna after Jasło, where he rented a pharmacy. Even in old age he showed political and charitable commitment and was a member of the Galician Parliament. He died on 7 January 1882 in Chorkówka of pneumonia and was buried in Zręcin.
Development of the oil lamp
In 1852, led by Łukasiewicz numerous pharmaceutical studies on oil, which was obtained in the region from septic tanks. He recognized the potential of the oil as an illuminant and thus as a cheap alternative to the expensive whale oil. To obtain a clean fuel, he began in Lemberg, together with his colleague Jan Zeh for a previously developed by the Canadian Abraham Gesner distillation process clear, thin liquid petroleum to produce. After several failed attempts to light the new substance in conventional oil lamps, he developed with the support of tinsmith Adam Bratkowski in 1853 the first prototype of a kerosene lamp.
On July 31, 1853 Łukasiewicz was called into the Piaristen Hospital of Lviv to provide one of its kerosene lamps with an appendectomy for light. Impressed by the bright, clean light, the hospital ordered from Łukasiewicz several lamps and 500 liters of kerosene.
On November 23, 1853 Łukasiewicz and toe went together to the imperial governor of Lviv to register the patent No. 399, to produce paraffin candles made from petroleum. Unlike often portrayed, on the other hand bears the patent listing # 400 just a few days later, on December 2, 1853, only the name Jan Zeh: It concerns the actual distillation process of crude oil. The patent was for two years. His lamp Łukasiewicz, however, has never let patenting, marketing was done by dealers in Lviv. Soon, kerosene lamps were manufactured by factories en masse, which in Vienna, Paris, Prague, Berlin, Leipzig and in the USA.
Impetus for the oil industry in Galicia
In the fall of 1853 Łukasiewicz moved to Gorlice and a pharmacy leased. In Gorlice developed at that time, a petroleum industry. Łukasiewicz and Jakub Kozik dealt further with the distillation of petroleum and improved the kerosene lamp. After successful trials in 1854 Gorlice was the first street lighting by kerosene lamps.
For the rapidly increasing number of oil lamps, oil production of shallow septic tanks in the region around Gorlice no longer sufficed soon. 1854 Tytus Trzecieski and Mikołaj Klobassa merged with Łukasiewicz to near Bóbrka, about 10 km south-west of Krosno to build the world's first oil mine. The oil was thereby drawn from 30 to 50 m deep hand -dug wells. A little later shafts were driven to depths of 150 m, where the oil from the deeper layers was easier and thus more suitable for the production of kerosene.
Łukasiewicz is considered an important pioneer of the oil production in Europe. As a result of its activities, the Subcarpathian Galicia developed in the second half of the 19th century to become the third largest oil region of the world, where in addition to the oil fields in the region of Gorlice those were the most important in Borysław and Kolomyja.