Aimé Argand was a Swiss physicist and chemist from Geneva, best known as the inventor of the Argand lamp, an oil lamp whose improved burner transformed domestic and public lighting in the late eighteenth century. His design is widely regarded as the most important advance in lamp technology since antiquity.
Argand's key innovation was a hollow, cylindrical wick set between two concentric tubes, which allowed air to flow both inside and outside the flame. Combined with a glass chimney that increased the draught, this produced a brighter, steadier and much less smoky light than earlier flat-wick lamps. He patented the lamp in England in 1784 and worked with Matthew Boulton in Birmingham on its manufacture, though he struggled to protect his invention from imitators, particularly in France, where it was copied and adapted. The Argand principle was soon applied to table lamps, wall lights, chandeliers, lighthouses and later to gas burners. Antique Argand lamps, often in bronze, ormolu or Sheffield plate with reservoirs set to one side, are prized examples of Georgian and Regency lighting, and collectors value original burners, chimneys and good quality metalwork.
