Revolving Furnaces, Thorium Nitrate Department

From “Set of Postcards depicting the Welsbach Factory in Gloucester, New Jersey”

n the 1880s, Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach (1858–1929) created fabric impregnated with thorium and cerium, which glowed incandescently when heated by burning gas. Mantels for gas lamps were the first industrial product to use rare earth elements, and led to an international trade in rare earth ores, especially monazite. Welsbach managed firms around the world that sold gas lamps for lighting streets, homes and businesses, which shaped the visual landscapes that millions of people inhabited from the 1890s into the 1930s.