BLACK LIGHT FOR URANIUM GLASS FREE

The yellowish-greeny colour of Vaseline petroleum jelly clearly inspired the name of the glass colour. (From an 1894 journal “The American Druggist”.) Rontrey writing in 1894 about the trademark protection that Chesebrough was trying to establish, sounds most likely: “the name Vaseline appears to me (in its mixed etymology) to have been compounded of VÂSE (the French for ooze) and the much abused terminal ine preceded by an a for the sake of euphony. There are all sorts of theories about the origins of the word. Patent in 1872, he wrote: 'I, Robert Chesebrough, have invented a new and useful product from petroleum which I have named Vaseline.' In fact he had named it before that, according to a 1912 ad for the product, which cited the “naming” date as 1869. A few rare examples of the Tornado Variant are known with the applied 'tornadoes' being in Vaseline.įootnote: where did Vaseline glass get its name from? And when was “Uranium Glass” first called Vaseline Glass?Ĭlearly the name is a reference to the brand name for the original Chesebrough petroleum jelly. There are some scarce European examples, like the rare Pebble and Fan, and Seagulls bulbous vases that were most probably made by Libochovice (Czechoslovakia). It is harder to find examples that were made by Northwood, Millersburg, Imperial or Sowerby. Fenton made the most, but it's not always easy to spot if there is a heavy iridescence.

It is not particularly common, as they all appeared to make it in relatively small quantities. But there’s no denying the impact of that 1897 newspaper report describing the “magnificent green fluorescence” on the glass under electric arc lighting.Ĭlassic Vaseline Carnival Glass was made by various glassmakers. It may be purely coincidental, of course. As the use of arc lamps dwindled, so did the popularity of Vaseline glass. It’s interesting to note that when arc lamps dominated the lighting scene, Vaseline glass was also very popular. The emergence of the incandescent light bulb (with its softer and more flattering golden light that had no UV rays) eventually won the race, although arc lights were used in retail stores well into the early 1900s, and even longer for outdoor lighting. They weren’t entirely safe, they were noisy and they cast a bright but often harsh, blue-purplish white light. But the next best thing is to read what people actually reported in the past – and that’s why old newspaper reports like this one are so important.īut arc lights had problems too. If only we could travel back in time, we’d be able to understand so much more.

BLACK LIGHT FOR URANIUM GLASS FREE

It explained how the vivid glow showed brightly under UV light, saying that, when viewed by any light free from UV light, uranium glass is colourless … but viewed by daylight or the electric arc light (rich in UV) the magnificent green fluorescence is seen. Here’s the proof we found : on the right is the 1897 newspaper article (which was about uranium glass). Well, we have solid, actual proof in the form of a contemporary report from 1897 that appeared in a British newspaper.Īs clearly explained in the report, the popularity of Vaseline glass was undoubtedly due to the fascinating effects it produced in certain kinds of light – and that crazy UV glow was well understood by the Victorians, thanks to the scientific experiments on fluorescence by George Stokes and others (in fact Stokes had coined the term “fluorescence” in 1852, to describe how uranium glass changes under different light conditions).

Black light for uranium glass