Message from Willie Wood
Following your recent message, here is the video of the kerosene fan of the East India Company, 1845.
Before WWII at our tea garden near Dharamtul in Assam, we had no electricity, so our fridge was powered in a similar manner, but with the fuel being methylated spirits to get a blue flame. We use to enjoy our ice-cream and Dad his ice-cubes for his Scotch.
Dad's radio was powered by car battery to listen to the BBC news, recharged at the tea factory. Our lighting consisted of powerful petromax lamps with kerosene for fuel and methylated spirits to warm the mantle and pipes before releasing the air pressure. Hung up high, they lit up the entire living room and dining room. For moving around in the dark and for our bedrooms, we used portable hurricane-lamps.
Follow up from Alan Lane :
The driving power is a ‘hot air engine’ , which many a model engineer must have made in their lifetime. The only thing was that the burning wick needed a good clean air circulation in the room otherwise you can end up being poisoned by CO gas in an enclosed space.
It would have probably been fine on a verandah location, lying back in your ‘planters chair’ after kamjari (the type where the two arms had a swing out facility underneath, and a pocket for your glass of whiskey/soda, or pink gin to sit in!) – you must remember those.
Yes, nearly all refrigerators were kerosene powered in the tea bungalows, but every so often had to be ‘woken up’ with a drive around the tea garden or compound. I understand that it was for shaking up the ammonia gas in the system.
My father had a couple of German radios (Siemens and a Grundig) that ran off a car battery – 12V DC - and as you said had to be charged up every so often, although father had a ‘trickle charger’ in the bungalow that was connected to the battery via a step-down transformer from the mains. Of course, in our day the bijli was DC and not AC as of now.
Petromax lamps, initially lit by meths, whilst pumping up the air receiver in the base – wonderful very bright light, but had to be very careful that the mantle did not get touched, as it could disintegrate into dust! The hurricane lamps – or haat butti – were much more reliable, although rather dim in the spread of light.
I remember that in a couple of tea estate burra bungalows I stayed at, the Petromax was suspended on a counterbalanced cable. So, that after lighting at low level, it could be pushed up towards the ceiling to give a better spread of light, and stayed at the position you had selected.
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