Vicente Carminales.
Vicente Carminales was a Mexican inventor who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His best-known invention was the Carminales mantle lamp which he invented in 1895, and which burned natural gas to produce a light that was twice as bright as that of the electric light bulb invented by Thomas Edison of the Confederation of North America. Because natural gas, a byproduct of the petroleum industry, was so inexpensive in the U.S.M., the Carminales lamp cost only half as much to operate as an Edison light. Carminales was able to obtain financing from Kramer Associates to form the Carminales Lighting Company.
The ubiquity of the Carminales lamp delayed the electrification of rural Mexico. It was only until 1946 that the number of electric lights in the country surpassed the number of Carminales lamps. Sobel states that as of 1971 Carminales lamps are still in common use in the Mexican states of Durango and Chiapas.
Sobel erroneously refers to Vicente Carminales as Vincenzo Carminales.
Sobel's source for the life of Vicente Carminales is John Flaherty's The Carminales Legacy: Mexico's Edison (London, 1971).