Modern candle wicks are designed to trim themselves as they burn
Before the 19th century, anyone burning a candle had to keep trimming the wick with scissors or snuffers, or it would smoke and gutter. Today's wicks are built to curl over as they burn, so the tip pokes into the hottest part of the flame and is quietly cut back by fire.
A candle is a self-feeding flame. Lighting the wick melts and vaporises a little wax, which mixes with air and burns. That flame melts the top of the solid fuel, and the liquid climbs the wick by capillary action to keep the fire going, so the candle and wick shorten together. The word itself goes back through Old English and Anglo-Norman to the Latin candela, from a verb meaning to shine.
Earlier peoples lit the night with open fires, torches, resin-rich splinters and lamps; simple oil lamps with a wick in a pool of fat date to the Paleolithic. Candles needed a dependable supply of animal or plant fat, so they cannot predate the early Bronze Age, and nobody knows exactly where they began. Possible candlesticks turn up in Babylonian and Minoan finds and in Tutankhamun's tomb, though those early lights were probably plant stems dipped in fat. An Etruscan tomb at Orvieto depicts a candlestick, and the oldest excavated one dates to the 7th century BC. Romans made true dipped candles of tallow and beeswax, while Chinese candles of the Qin dynasty, before 200 BC, may have used whale fat.
Beeswax burned cleanly and without tallow's smoky flame and bad smell, but it was costly, so for centuries it belonged to the rich and to churches. Christianity gave candles ceremonial weight: Easter candles are recorded in Spain and Italy in the fourth century, Candlemas takes its name from them, and papal rulings banned tallow from altar candles. In medieval England most households made do with rushlights of greased rushes or tallow candles, which are mentioned in English in 1154.
Paraffin wax and efficient manufacturing finally made candles cheap for everyone. Electric light has since made them unnecessary for seeing in the dark, yet people still use them for heat, timekeeping, fragrance, ritual and mood, held in candlesticks, lanterns, sconces and chandeliers. The traditional name for their maker is a chandler.
Source: Candle
