Editing Bunsen burner (section)

== History ==
In 1852, the [[University of Heidelberg]] hired Bunsen and promised him a new laboratory building. The city of Heidelberg had begun to install [[coal-gas]] street lighting, and the university laid gas lines to the new laboratory.

The designers of the building intended to use the gas not just for lighting, but also as fuel for burners for laboratory operations. For any burner lamp, it was desirable to maximize the temperature of its flame, and minimize its luminosity (which represented lost heating energy). Bunsen sought to improve existing laboratory burner lamps as regards economy, simplicity, and flame temperature, and adapt them to coal-gas fuel.

While the building was under construction in late 1854, Bunsen suggested certain design principles to the university's mechanic, [[Peter Desaga]], and asked him to construct a prototype. Similar principles had been used in an earlier burner design by [[Michael Faraday]], and in a device patented in 1856 by gas engineer R. W. Elsner. The Bunsen/Desaga design generated a hot, sootless, non-luminous flame by mixing the gas with air in a controlled fashion before combustion.  Desaga created adjustable slits for air at the bottom of the cylindrical burner, with the flame issuing at the top. When the building opened early in 1855, Desaga had made 50 burners for Bunsen's students. Two years later Bunsen published a description, and many of his colleagues soon adopted the design. Bunsen burners are now used in laboratories around the world.<ref>{{cite book| author = Ihde, Aaron John |author-link=Aaron J. Ihde |title = The development of modern chemistry| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=34KwmkU4LG0C&pg=PA233| date = 1984| publisher = Courier Dover Publications| isbn = 978-0-486-64235-2| pages = 233–236 }}</ref>