CONTENTS.
| CHAPTER I. |
| Origin of Coal, [9]. Coal of various ages, [11]. Graphite, [12]. Recent Vegetable Deposits, [13]. Mode of occurrence of Coal, [13]. Structure of Coal, [15]. Uses of Coal, [16]. Coal a source of Energy, [17]. Mechanical Equivalent of Heat, [19]. Value of Coal as a Fuel, [20]. Small efficiency of Steam-engines, [21]. Mechanical value of Coal, [22]. Whence Coal derives its Energy, [22]. Chemical Composition of Coal, [23]. Growth of Plants, [26]. Solar Energy, [28]. Transformation of Wood into Coal, [30]. Destructive Distillation of Coal, [33]. Experiments of Becher, [34]; of Dean Clayton, [35]; of Stephen Hales, [37]; of Bishop Watson, [37]; of the Earl of Dundonald, [39]. Coal-gas introduced by Murdoch, [40]. Spread of the new Illuminant, [41]. Manufacture of Coal-gas, [42]. Quantitative results, [45]. Uses of Coke, [47]. Goethe’s visit to Stauf, [48]. Bishop Watson on waste from Coke-ovens, [50]. Shale-oil Industry, [50]. History of Coal-mining, [57]. Introduction of Coal into London, [58]. The Coal resources of the United Kingdom, [60]. Competition between Electricity and Coal-gas, [62]. |
| CHAPTER II. |
| Ammoniacal Liquor of Gas-works, [64]. Origin of the Ammonia, [65]. Ammonia as a Fertilizer, [65]. Other uses of Ammonia, [67]. Annual production of Ammonia, [68]. Utilization of Coal-tar, [69]. The Creosoting of Timber, [70]. Early uses of the Light Tar Oils, [71]. Discovery of Benzene by Faraday; isolation from Tar Oil by Hofmann and Mansfield, [73]. Discovery of Mauve by Perkin, [74]. History of Aniline, [75]. The Distillation of Coal-tar, [77]. Separation of the Hydrocarbons of the Benzene Series, [82]. Manufacture of Aniline and Toluidine, [87]. History and Manufacture of Magenta, [89]. Blue, Violet, and Green Dyes from Magenta, [92]. The Triphenylmethane Group, [97]. The Azines, [108]. Lauth’s Violet and Methylene Blue, [111]. Aniline Black, [114]. Introduction of Azo-dyes, [115]. Aniline Yellow, Manchester Brown, and Chrysoïdine, [118]. The Indulines, [121]. Chronological Summary, [122]. |
| CHAPTER III. |
| Natural Sources of Indigo, [124]. Syntheses of the Colouring-matter, [126]. Carbolic Oil, its treatment and its constituents, [129]. Phenol Dyes, [132]. Salicylic Acid and its uses, [134]. Picric Acid, [136]. Naphthalene and its applications, [139]. The Albo-carbon Light, [140]. Phthalic Acid and the Phthaleïns, [145]. Magdala Red, [149]. Azo-dyes from the Naphthols, Naphthylamines, and their Sulpho-acids, [150]. Naphthol Green, the Oxazines, and the Indophenols, [161]. Creosote Oil, [163]. The Lucigen Burner, [163]. Anthracene Oil, [167]. The Discovery of Artificial Alizarin, and its effects on Madder growing, [167]. The industrial isolation of Anthracene and its conversion into Colouring-matters, [171]. Pitch, and its uses, [176]. Patent Fuel, or Briquettes, [178]. Coal-tar products in Pharmacy, [178]. Aromatic Perfumes, [185]. Coal-tar Saccharin, [186]. Coal-tar Products in Photography, [188]. Coal-tar Products in Biology, [192]. Value of the Coal-tar Industry, [194]. The Coal-tar Industry in relation to pure Science, [196]. Permanence of the Artificial Colouring-matters, [198]. Chronological Summary, [200]. Addendum, [202]. |
COAL;
AND WHAT WE GET FROM IT.
CHAPTER I.
“Hier [1771] fand sich eine zusammenhängende Ofenreihe, wo Steinkohlen abgeschwefelt und zum Gebrauch bei Eisenwerken tauglich gemacht werden sollten; allein zu gleicher Zeit wollte man Oel und Harz auch zu Gute machen, ja sogar den Russ nicht missen, und so unterlag den vielfachen Absichten alles zusammen.”—Goethe, Wahrheit und Dichtung, Book X.
To get at the origin of the familiar fuel which blazes in our grates with such lavish waste of heat, and pollutes the atmosphere of our towns with its unconsumed particles, we must in imagination travel backwards through the course of time to a very remote period of the world’s history. Ages before man, or the species of animals and plants which are contemporaneous with him, had appeared upon the globe, there flourished a vegetation not only remarkable for its luxuriance, but also for the circumstance that it consisted to a preponderating extent of non-flowering or cryptogamic plants. In swampy areas, such as the deltas at the mouths of great rivers, or in shallow lagoons bordering a coast margin, the jungles of ferns and tree-ferns, club-mosses and horse-tails, sedges, grasses, &c., grew and died down year by year, forming a consolidated mass of vegetable matter much in the same way that a peat bed or a mangrove swamp is accumulating organic deposits at the present time. In the course of geological change these beds of compressed vegetation became gradually depressed, so that marine or fresh-water sediment was deposited over them, and then once more the vegetation spread and flourished to furnish another accumulation of vegetable matter, which in its turn became submerged and buried under sediment, and so on in successive alternations of organic and sedimentary deposits.
But these conditions of climate, and the distribution of land and water favourable to the accumulation of large deposits of vegetable matter, gradually gave way to a new order of things. The animals and plants adapted to the particular conditions of existence described above gave rise to descendants modified to meet the new conditions of life. Enormous thicknesses of other deposits were laid down over the beds of vegetable remains and their intercalated strata of clay, shale, sandstone, and limestone. The chapter of the earth’s history thus sealed up and stowed away among her geological records relates to a period now known as the Carboniferous, because of the prevalence of seams or beds of coal throughout the formation at certain levels. By the slow process of chemical decomposition without access of air, modified also by the mechanical pressure of superincumbent formations, the vegetable deposits accumulated in the manner described have, in the lapse of ages, become transformed into the substance now familiar to us as coal.