Carl Auer von Welsbach

Carl Auer von Welsbach was an Austrian chemist and engineer whose 1885 invention of the gas mantle, a fabric mesh impregnated with rare earth oxides that glows brightly when heated by a gas flame, multiplied the light output of gas lighting several times over and extended the economic life of gas illumination well into the era of electric competition. He founded companies that manufactured the mantle worldwide and later developed ferrocerium, the flint alloy used in cigarette lighters and ignition devices, building on his earlier work isolating and separating rare earth elements including praseodymium and neodymium from the mixture then known as didymium.