ILLUMINATING GAS.
“How wonderful that sunbeams absorbed by vegetation in the primordial
ages of the earth and buried in its depths as vegetable fossils
through immeasurable eras of time, until system upon system of slowly
formed rocks have been piled above, should come forth at last, at the
disenchanting touch of science, and turn the light of civilised man
into day.”--_Prof. E. L. Youmans._
“The invention of artificial light has extended the available term
of human life, by giving the night to man’s use; it has, by the
social intercourse it encourages, polished his manners and refined
his tastes, and perhaps as much as anything else, has aided his
intellectual progress.”--_Draper._
If one desires to know what the condition of cities, towns and peoples
was before the nineteenth century had lightened and enlightened them,
let him step into some poor country town in some out-of-the-way region
(and such may yet be found) at night, pick his way along rough
pavements, and no pavements, by the light of a smoky lamp placed here
and there at corners, and of weeping lamps and limp candles in the
windows of shops and houses, and meet people armed with tin lanterns
throwing a dubious light across the pathways. Let him be prepared to be
assailed by the odours of undrained gutters, ditches, and roads called
streets, and escape, if he can, stumbling and falling into them. Let him
take care also that he avoid in the darkness the drippings from the
overhanging eaves or windows, and falling upon the slippery steps of the
dim doorway he may be about to enter. Within, let him overlook, if he
can, in the hospitable reception, the dim and smoky atmosphere, and
observe that the brightest and best as well as the most cheerful
illuminant flashes from the wide open fireplace. Occasionally a glowing
grate might be met. The eighteenth century did have its glowing grates,
and its still more glowing furnaces of coal in which the ore was melted
and by the light of which the castings were made.
It is very strange that year after year for successive generations men
saw the hard black coal break under the influence of heat and burst into
flames which lit up every corner, without learning, beyond sundry
accidents and experiments, that this _gast_, or _geest_, or _spirit_, or
_vapour_, or _gas_, as it was variously called, could be led away from
its source, ignited at a distance, and made to give light and heat at
other places than just where it was generated.
Thus Dr. Clayton, Dean of Kildare, Ireland, in 1688 distilled gas from
coal and lit and burned it, and told his learned friend, the Hon. Robert
Boyle, about it, who announced it with interest to the Royal Society,
and again it finds mention in the _Philosophical Transactions_ fifty
years later. Then, in 1726, Dr. Hales told how many cubic inches of gas
a certain number of grains of coal would produce. Then Bishop Watson in
1750 passed some gas through water and carried it in pipes from one
place to another; and then Lord Dundonald in 1786 built some ovens,
distilled coal and tar, burned the gas, and got a patent. In the same
year, Dr. Rickel of Würzburg lighted his laboratory with gas made by the
dry distillation of bones; but all these were experiments. Finally,
William Murdock, the owner of large workshops at Redruth, in Cornwall, a
practical man and mechanic, and a keen observer, using soft coal to a
large extent in his shops, tried with success in 1792 to collect the
escaping gas and with it lit up the shops. Whether he continued steadily
to so use the gas or only at intervals, at any rate it seems to have
been experimental and failed to attract attention. It appears that he
repeated the experiment at the celebrated steam engine works of Boulton
and Watt at Soho, near Birmingham, in 1798, and again illuminated the
works in 1802, on occasion of a peace jubilee.
In the meantime, in 1801, Le Bon, a Frenchman at Paris, had succeeded in
making illuminating gas from wood, lit his house therewith, and proposed
to light the whole city of Paris.
Thus it may be said that illuminating gas and the new century were born
together--the former preceding the latter a little and lighting the way.
Then in 1803 the English periodicals began to take the matter up and
discuss the whole subject. One magazine objected to its use in houses on
the ground that the curtains and furniture would be ruined by the
saturation produced by the oxygen and hydrogen, and that the curtains
would have to be wrung out the next morning after the illumination.
There doubtless was good cause for objection to the smoky, unpleasant
smelling light then produced.
In America in 1806 David Melville of Newport, Rhode Island, lighted with
gas his own house and the street in front of it. In 1813 he took out a
patent and lighted several factories. In 1817 his process was applied to
Beaver Tail Lighthouse on the Atlantic coast--the first use of
illuminating gas in lighthouses. Coal oil and electricity have since
been found better illuminants for this purpose.
Murdoch, Winser, Clegg and others continued to illuminate the public
works and buildings of England. Westminster Bridge and the Houses of
Parliament were lighted in 1813, and the streets of London in 1815.
Paris was lighted in 1820, and the largest American cities from 1816 to
1825. But it required the work of the chemists as well as the mechanics
to produce the best gas. The rod of Science had touched the rock again
and from the earth had sprung another servant with power to serve
mankind, and waited the skilled brain and hand to direct its course.
Produced almost entirely from bituminous coal, it was found to be
composed chiefly of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen; but various other gases
were mixed therewith. To determine the proper proportions of these
gases, to know which should be increased or wholly or partly eliminated,
required the careful labours of patient chemists. They taught also how
the gas should be distilled, condensed, cleaned, scrubbed, confined in
retorts, and its flow measured and controlled.
Fortunately the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part
of the nineteenth had produced chemists whose investigations and
discoveries paved the way for success in this revolution in the world of
light. Priestley had discovered oxygen. Dalton had divided matter into
atoms, and shown that in its every form, whether solid, liquid, or
gaseous, these atoms had their own independent, characteristic,
unalterable weight, and that gases diffused themselves in certain
proportions.
Berthollet, Graham, and a host of others in England, France, and
Germany, advanced the art. The highest skilled mechanics, like Clegg of
England, supplied the apparatus. He it was who invented a gas purifier,
liquid gas meter, and other useful contrivances.
As the character of the gas as an illuminator depends on the quantity of
hydro-carbon, or olefiant elements it contains, great efforts were made
to invent processes and means of carbureting it.
The manufacture of gas was revolutionised by the invention of water gas.
The main principle of this process is the mixture of hydrogen with the
vapour of some hydro-carbon: Hydrogen burns with very little light and
the purpose of the hydro-carbon is to increase the brilliancy of the
flame. The hydrogen gas is so obtained by the decomposition of water,
effected by passing steam through highly heated coals.
Patents began to be taken out in this line in England in 1823-24; by
Donovan in 1830; Geo. Lowe in 1832, and White in 1847. But in England
water gas could not compete with coal gas in cheapness. On the contrary,
in America, especially after the petroleum wells were opened up, and
nature supplied the hydro-carbon in roaring wells and fountains, water
gas came to the front.
The leading invention there in this line was that of T. S. C. Lowe of
Morristown, Pennsylvania, in 1873. In Lowe’s process anthracite coal
might be used, which was raised in a suitable retort to a great heat,
then superheated steam admitted over this hot bed and decomposed into
hydrogen and carbonic oxide; then a small stream of naphtha or crude
petroleum was thrown upon the surface of the burning coal, and from
these decompositions and mixtures a rich olefiant product and other
light-giving gases were produced.
The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 1886 awarded Lowe, or his
representatives, a grand medal of honour, his being the invention
exhibited that year which in their opinion contributed most to the
welfare of mankind.
A number of inventors have followed in the direction set by Lowe. The
largest part of gas manufacture, which has become so extensive, embodies
the basic idea of the Lowe process.
The competition set up by the electricians, especially in the production
of the beautiful incandescent light for indoor illumination, has spurred
inventors of gas processes to renewed efforts--much to the benefit of
that great multitude who sit in darkness until corporations furnish them
with light.
It was found by Siemens, the great German inventor of modern gas
regenerative furnace systems, that the quality of the gas was much
improved, and a greater intensity of light obtained, by heating the
gases and air before combustion--a plan particularly adapted in lighting
large spaces.
To describe in detail the large number of inventions relating to the
manufacture of gas would require a huge volume--the generators,
carburetors, retorts, mixers, purifiers, metres, scrubbers, holders,
condensers, governors, indicators, registers, chargers, pressure
regulators, etc., etc.
It was a great convenience outside of towns and cities, where gas mains
could not be laid, to have domestic plants and portable gas apparatus,
worked on the same principles, but in miniature form, adapted to a
single house, but the exercise of great ingenuity was required to render
such adaptation successful.
In the use of liquid illuminants, which need a wick to feed them, the
_Argand burner_--that arrangement of concentric tubes between which the
wick is confined--although invented by Argand in 1784, yet has occupied
a vast field of usefulness in connection with the lamps of the
nineteenth century.
A dangerous but very extensively used illuminating liquid before coal
oil was discovered was camphene, distilled from turpentine. It gave a
good light but was not a safe domestic companion.
Great attention has recently been paid to the production of _acetylene_
gas, produced by the reaction between _calcium carbide_ and water. The
making of the calcium carbide by the decomposition of mixed pulverised
lime and coal by the use of a powerful electric battery, is a
preliminary step in the production of this gas, and was a subsequent
discovery.
The electric light, acetylene, magnesium, and other modern sources of
light, although they may be more brilliant and intense than coal gas,
cannot compete in cheapness of production with the latter. Thus far
illuminating coal gas is still the queen of artificial lights.
After gas was fairly started in lighting streets and buildings its
adaptation to lamps followed; and among the most noted of gas lamps is
that of Von Welsbach, who combined a bunsen gas flame and a glass
chimney with a “_mantle_” located therein. This mantle is a gauze-like
structure made of refractory quartz, or of certain oxides, which when
heated by the gas flame produce an incandescent glow of intense
brilliancy, with a reduced consumption of gas.