Bunsen burner. Robert Bunsen (1811–1899) was one of the finest and most versatile chemists of the nineteenth century. When hired by the University of Heidelberg in 1852, he was promised a new laboratory building, which was ready for occupancy in the spring of 1855. Coincidentally, Heidelberg had just begun to light city streets by coal gas, and Bunsen specified that his laboratory should be similarly equipped.
At this time, chemists used a variety of fuels for heating: “spirit” (alcohol) lamps, oils, coal, and charcoal. Coal gas had been tried as well, but incomplete combustion produced a flame more notable for its luminosity than its heat. In the fall of 1854, Bunsen suggested to the university's mechanic, Peter Desaga, a way to obtain a very hot, sootless, nonluminous flame by mixing the gas with air in a controlled fashion before combustion.
The flow of the gas could pull in air through apertures at the bottom of a cylindrical burner, the flame igniting at the top. Given this concept, Desaga developed a workable design and had produced fifty burners by the time the new lab opened for business. Bunsen published a description of the burner two years later.
It was rapidly and widely adopted. He never sought a patent, in effect donating this important invention to the world of science. The Bunsen burner, simple, inexpensive, and effective, immediately displaced its predecessors. The easily adjusted flame burned hot and clean, and was perfectly suited to laboratory operations. The present form of the Bunsen burner, familiar to every science student today, has scarcely changed from the original of 1855.
Bibliography G. Lockemann, The Centenary of the Bunsen Burner , Journal of Chemical Education 33 (1956): pp.20–21. A. J. Rocke
How to cite this entry: A. J. Rocke "Bunsen burner" The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. J. L. Heilbron, ed., Oxford University Press 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 January 2012
