A Practical Treatise on Gas-light / Exhibiting a Summary Description of the Apparatus and Machinery Best Calculated for Illuminating Streets, Houses, and Manufactories, with Carburetted Hydrogen, or Coal-Gas, with Remarks on the Utility, Safety, and General Nature of this new Branch of Civil Economy.

by Friedrich Christian Accum

The manufacture of the coal-gas requires nothing more than what the most ignorant person, with a common degree of care and attention, is competent to perform. The heating of the gas-furnace, the charging of the retorts with coal, the closing them up air-tight, the keeping them red-hot, and discharging them again, are the only operations required in this art; and these, surely, demand no more skill than a few practical lessons can teach to the meanest capacity. The workman is not called upon to exercise his own judgment, because, when the fire is properly managed, the evolution of the gas goes on spontaneously, and without further care, till all the gas is extricated from the coal.

No part of the machinery is liable to be out of order,—there are no cocks to be turned, no valves to be regulated; nor can the operator derange the apparatus but by the most violent efforts. And when the stock of gas is prepared, we may depend on its lighting power as much as we depend on the light to be obtained from a certain number of candles or oil-lamps.

The diversified experiments which have been made by different individuals, unconnected with each other, have sufficiently established the perfect safety of the new lights; and numerous manufactories might be named in which the gas-lights have now been in use for upwards of seven years, where nothing like an accident has occurred, though the apparatus in all of them is entrusted to the most ignorant man.

It would be easy to state the causes which have given rise to some of those accidents that have spread alarm amongst the public; but of this it is not my business to speak at length. It is sufficient, on the present occasion, to state, that those melancholy occurrences which have happened at some gas-light establishments which I have had an opportunity of examining, were totally occasioned by egregious failures committed in the construction of the machinery. Thus, an explosion very lately took place in a manufactory lighted with coal-gas, in consequence of a large quantity of gas escaping into a building, where it mingled with common air, and was set on fire by the approach of a lighted candle. That such an accident could happen, is an evident proof that the machinery was erected by a bungler, unacquainted with the most essential principles of this art; because such an accident might have been effectually prevented, by adapting a waste pipe to the gasometer and gasometer house. By this means, if more gas had been prepared than the gasometer would contain, the superfluous quantity could never have accumulated, but would have been transported out of the building into the open air, in as an effectual manner as the waste-pipe of a water cistern conveys away the superfluous quantity of water, when the cistern is full. Such an expedient did not form part of the machinery.

Other instances might be named, where explosions have been occasioned through egregious mistakes having been committed in the erection of the gas-light machinery, were this a subject on which I meant to treat.

That the coal-gas, when mixed with a certain portion of common air, in close vessels, may be inflamed by the contact of a lighted body, as has been stated, [page 98], is a fact sufficiently known. But the means of preventing such an occurrence in the common application of gas-lights, are so simple, easy, and effectual, that it would be ridiculous to dread danger where there is nothing to be apprehended. In speaking thus of the safety of the gas-light illumination, I do not mean to deny that no possible circumstances may occur where the coal-gas may be the cause of accident. It is certain that the gas, when suffered to accumulate in large quantities in close and confined places, where there is no current of air, such as in cellars, vaults, &c. and where it can mix with common air, and remain undisturbed, that it may be liable to take fire when approached by a lighted body; but I do not see how it is probable that such an accumulation of gas should take place in the apartments of dwelling houses. The constant current of air which passes continually through the rooms, is sufficient to prevent the possibility of such an accumulation ever to take place. And with regard to the bursting of the pipes which convey the gas, no accident can possibly happen from that quarter; because the gas which passes through the whole range of pipes sustains a pressure equal to the perpendicular weight of about one inch of water only, and such a weight of course is insufficient to burst iron pipes. Nor could the town when illuminated by gas-lights, be thrown suddenly into darkness, as has been asserted might happen by the fracture of a main pipe, supposing such an event should take place; because the lateral branches, which supply the street-lamps and houses, are supplied by more than one main; and the consequence of a fracture would be only an extinction of the few lamps in the immediate vicinity of the broken pipe, because the rest of the pipes, situated beyond the fracture, would continue to be supplied with gas from the other mains, as will become obvious from the sketch exhibited in the next page.

Main pipe, leading from the Gas-light station or apparatus,
situated in Brick Lane, near Old St.[34]

Main pipe, leading from the gaslight apparatus, or station, at Norton Falgate.[35]