The common laboratory burner linked to Faraday’s early design and Bunsen’s later improvement is the Bunsen burner.
Michael Faraday described an early laboratory gas burner in his 1827 work Chemical Manipulation. Its design used the controlled mixing of gas and air before combustion, helping produce a hotter, cleaner flame than an ordinary luminous gas flame. Faraday’s burner was an important predecessor, although it was not yet the familiar modern instrument.
Robert Bunsen and university mechanic Peter Desaga developed an improved version for the Heidelberg laboratory in the mid-1850s. Their burner admitted air through adjustable openings and produced a hot, sootless, non-luminous flame. Desaga had made about 50 burners by the laboratory’s opening in 1855, and Bunsen later described the apparatus in print.
The name can therefore be misleading: Bunsen did not create the idea from nothing, and Faraday’s earlier design is part of its history. The Tirrill and Meker burners are later variants, while a spirit lamp is a different type of heat source.