Ignacy Łukasiewicz: The Generous Inventor of the Kerosene Lamp
In the 19th century, a Polish pharmacist invented the kerosene lamp – a device that quickly went on to light up Europe. He also went on to open the first oil mine and kerosene refinery in the world, becoming a pioneer of the oil business. But business wasn’t his only forte: he became a philanthropist and was a pillar of his community. Meet Ignacy Łukasiewicz.
Ignacy Łukasiewicz was born in a small wooden manor in the village of Zaduszniki in southern on 8th March 1822. The building was leased by his parents, Apollonia and Józef, a gentry couple of modest means and patriotic traditions. Ignacy was the youngest of five siblings, he had two brothers and two sisters. He was given the names Jan Boży Józef Ignacy but as an adult was only known by the latter.
In 1830, the family moved to Rzeszów as Ignacy’s father had fallen ill and had to undergo medical treatment. At the age of ten, Ignacy began attending school in Rzeszów, where he was a straight-A student:
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Ignacy was a good student, he mostly achieved top grades (…).
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From ‘Szejk z Galicji. Ignacy Łukasiewicz 1822-1882’, a 2007 book by Włodzimierz Bonusiak, trans. MK
In 1836, Ignacy’s father passed away putting the Łukasiewicz family in a difficult financial position. Ignacy was forced to discontinue his education and look for a job. The fourteen-year-old found employment at a pharmacy in the town of Łańcut, where he became a trainee.
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Piotr Mikolasch’s pharmacy in Lviv, where Ignacy Łukasiewicz began to refine oil, 1850, photo: Foka / Forum
At the pharmacy Łukasiewicz learned not only about medicines but also about botany and chemical analysis. After four years of work as a trainee, he passed a professional exam which allowed him to become an assistant pharmacist. In that capacity he got a job at Edward Hübel’s pharmacy in Rzeszów in 1841. Łukasiewicz had moved back to take care of his mother.
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The pharmacist Jan Royss, who was employed at that pharmacy, characterised Łukasiewicz as a man of kind heart, eager to help his family and take care of his sick mother. Ignacy Łukasiewicz is taciturn, tenacious and extremely hard working.
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From ‘Ignacy Łukasiewicz 1822-1882. Życie, Dzieło i Pamięć’, a 2004 book by Józef Zbigniew Sozański, trans. MK
Back in Rzeszów, Łukasiewicz became involved with an underground group preparing an insurgency seeking to restore Poland’s independence. This group gathered information about Austrian military forces and spread the idea of an uprising. Łukasiewicz’s workplace, where various people could show up without raising suspicion, served as a contact point.
Eventually, however, the group of would-be insurgents was detected by the Austrian authorities and, as a result, in 1846 Łukasiewicz was sent to prison. He spent nearly two years there, after which he was released due to a lack of evidence conclusively linking him to the plot to organise an uprising. Łukasiewicz moved in with his brother Franciszek in Lviv. It took him eight months to find a job as an assistant pharmacist at the pharmacy of Piotr Mikolasch. This place was equipped with a proper laboratory used for conducting chemical analyses and was one of the best pharmacies in Lviv.
In the years 1850-52, Łukasiewicz took a hiatus from his job to study pharmacy, first at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and later at the University of Vienna. After receiving his diploma, he returned to Lviv to work at Mikolasch’s establishment.
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Kerosene lamps at the Warsaw Gasworks Museum, photo: Joanna Borowska / Forum
In 1852, Mikolasch bought about a hundred kilograms of oil and asked his workers, Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh, to conduct a chemical analyses of it. The duo managed to obtain an expensive skin ointment known as Oleum Petrae album but the product didn’t sell well due to its high price.
But Łukasiewicz and Zeh continued to experiment with the oil. That same year, they managed to distil the oil to obtain kerosene. Historian Prof. Andrzej Notkowski noted in a 2002 Polish Radio broadcast:
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This was the world’s first, methodical distillation of oil carried out using laboratory, scientific methods.
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From polskieradio.pl, trans. MK
Later, together with the Lviv tinsmith Adam Bratkowski, Łukasiewicz designed a special lamp that used kerosene as fuel – and so the first kerosene lamp in the world was created! It’s earliest documented use occurred in March 1853 at Mikolasch’s pharmacy.
It wasn’t long before Łukasiewicz’s invention started to attract attention. In July, kerosene lamps were being used for lighting at the Lviv hospital. The institution purchased 500 kilograms of kerosene from Łukasiewicz, Mikolasch and Zeh to be able to fuel its new modern lighting system. In the following years, the kerosene lamp became extremely popular across Europe and manufacturers began popping up in cities like Vienna, Budapest or Leipzig.
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The light of a kerosene lamp was only slightly stronger than that of an oil lamp […], but the fuel for it was cheap and easily accessible, and thanks to this it became a popular lighting device, one that even the impoverished social classes could afford.
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From ‘Szejk z Galicji. Ignacy Łukasiewicz 1822-1882’, trans. MK
They were, therefore, a game changer. Kerosene lamps were most prevalent in the years 1860-1920.
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Gorlice, the place where the first kerosene street lamp was lit, photo: Daniel Pach / Forum
At the turn of 1853 and 1854, Łukasiewicz decided to move to the town of Gorlice where he could lease a pharmacy of his own. There he continued to work on the distillation of oil and the development of the kerosene lamp. In 1854, thanks to Łukasiewicz, the world’s first kerosene street lamp was lit the town of Gorlice – it illuminated an outdoor shrine.
That same year, our inventor was visited by Tytus Trzecieski, who informed him that there were substantial deposits of oil in the village of Bóbrka located about 40 kilometres to the west of Gorlice – oil was spurting out of the ground in a local forest. By the end of 1854, Łukasiewicz and Trzecieski began mining in Bóbrka; the owner of the forest, Karol Klobassa, had allowed them to operate there – the first oil mine in the world had opened.
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The mine in Bóbrka started out as a 100 metre long and 1,2 metre deep ditch dug in a place where abundant outflows occurred and patches of thickened oil appeared on the surface. […] Water accumulated in the ditch, carrying on its surface a layer of oil which was gathered into vessels.
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‘Ignacy Łukasiewicz 1822-1882. Życie, Dzieło i Pamięć’ by Józef Zbigniew Sozański, 2004, trans. MK
Although Łukasiewicz continued to be active as a pharmacist, he was now also an oil man. Eventually, the mine in Bóbrka started producing so much oil that he decided to open a facility dedicated to processing it. In 1856, Łukasiewicz opened a refinery in the village of Ulaszowice (today’s Jasło), which was the first kerosene refinery in the world. He began manufacturing and selling oil products such as kerosene, oil for lubricating machines and asphalt. By 1859 he had a contract to supply the Austrian railways with kerosene.
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Ignacy Łukasiewicz’s palace in Chorkówka, photo: szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl
The death of his daughter Marianna and a fire that broke out at the Ulaszowice refinery caused Ignacy Łukasiewicz to reconsider his involvement in the oil business, however, Trzecieski managed to dissuade him.
Around 1861 a new, large deposit of oil was found in Bóbrka and Łukasiewicz, Trzecieski and Klobassa formed a company in order to mine it together. Soon they were making great profits from it. Łukasiewicz then opened a new refinery in Polanka and later another in Chorkówka.
In order to modernise his mines, Łukasiewicz consulted with experts on geology and drilling. This resulted in the introduction of the steam drilling machine in Bóbrka, which allowed for drilling as deep as 240 metres deep.
At his refineries, he obtained kerosene of very high quality. Apparently, news of his product got out, and he was soon visited by a delegation of American oilmen who wanted to learn from his expertise. Legend has it, that one of the visitors was non-other-than John D. Rockefeller himself.
But Ignacy Łukasiewicz was more than just a successful businessman. He was also a very supportive employer and a pillar of his community.
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Just after his company started to turn a substantial profit, Łukasiewicz began to substantially finance the building of schools, roads, bridges, hospitals and churches. […] He battled poverty and alcoholism in his region. In Chorkówka and Bóbrka, he opened schools for girls, paid for the teachers and gave the country folk access to high quality education for their children.
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From klubjagiellonski.pl, trans. MK
Łukasiewicz paid his workers high salaries and introduced a system of insurance for them, which was a novelty at the time. Three percent of the workers’ wages were automatically transferred to a special fund which provided healthcare for the sick, relief for those affected by a house fire and family pensions in the case of an employee’s death.
For his charitable activities Łukasiewicz was awarded the Order of St. Gregory and the title of Papal Chamberlain by Pope Pius IX.
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Ignacy Łukasiewicz bench in Gorlice, photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC-By-SA 4.0
Łukasiewicz went on to invest in further oil mines in places like Ropianka, Smereczne and Wilsznia. He also became active as a politician – in the years 1877-81 he was a member of the local parliament of Galicia, a region of Austro-Hungary spanning the Austrian partition of Poland.
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Thanks to Łukasiewicz’s political activity the Galician parliament granted the first meaningful state subsidies for exploratory oil drills in the area of Grybów and Gorlice and for the creation of geological maps of Galicia.
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Prof. Andrzej Notkowski, from polskieradio.pl, trans. MK
Łukasiewicz is also known to have advised other Galician oilmen on how to operate their refineries facilitating the growth of the oil business in the region. This was quite selfless of him as he was effectively helping out his competition.
All the hard work Łukasiewicz had put into his businesses and endeavours may have adversely affected his health. On 7th January 1882, at the age of 59, he succumbed to pneumonia. His funeral was attended by over 4,000 people, many of whom had their lives positively affected by Łukasiewicz’s entrepreneurship and charitable activities. His grave can be found in the village of Zręcin. Today, Łukasiewicz is remembered not only as the inventor of the kerosene lamp and a world pioneer of the oil business but also as a generous, thoughtful individual.
Written by Marek Kępa, Oct 21
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