THE FIREFLY LAMP

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 April 1934, Page 2

THE FIREFLY LAMP

MADE BY A PROFESSOR A lamp made of fireflies sounds like something that might have been used by the tJaliph Haroun-al-Raschid to illuminate one of his banquets in the Arabian Nights,' says a writer in the “Children’s Newspaper.’’ Yet a- lamp of that kind on a small scale has been shown by a Princeton professor, Dr. Newton Harvey, and ne lias explained liow one large enough to read by could be constructed. The firefly’s light, like that of the glow-worm is caused by the combined action of twi chemical substances called luciferin and luciferase, though exactly what they - re ihe chemist does not know. When lie does he will be able to make the glow-worm’s light and sell it. At present it is too dear because the Luciferin and the luciferase have to be extracted from the dead bodies of fireflies. Then the substances are mixed together with water and oxygen and a very finely powdered metal. Jf no\y a stream of hydrogen gas is ’bubbled through this mixture a glow like the firefly’s light arises, aud it never goes out.

The firefly light is never strong. One firefly gives out a light less than one two-hundredth of a candle-power. A disc of fireflv light in the ceiling, like one of those electric light bowls so much used now, would have to be twelve feet across to give enough light to read by oil a tablb seven feet below it. Still, if the chemists learn how to make luciferin ana luciferase cheaply .and artificially this may become the light of the twentieth century.