Several years after the introduction of the new light, a German, named Wintzer or Winsor, brought out (in 1809) a scheme similar to one projected in Paris by Le Bon, for lighting the streets by gas. He proposed a Joint Stock Company, with a capital of 300,000l., and held forth to subscribers the prospect of a profit of ten thousand per cent.![357] He applied to Parliament for a Bill, against which Murdock petitioned, and was examined before the Committee. Though they were staggered by the crudities of Winsor, they had some difficulty even in accepting the more modest averments of Murdock as to the uses of coal-gas for lighting purposes. “Do you mean to tell us,” asked one member, “that it will be possible to have a light without a wick?” “Yes, I do, indeed,” answered Murdock. “Ah, my friend,” said the legislator, “you are trying to prove too much.” It was as surprising and inconceivable to the honourable member as George Stephenson’s subsequent evidence before a Parliamentary Committee to the effect that a carriage might be drawn upon a railway at the rate of twelve miles an hour without a horse.
No wonder that strange notions were entertained about gas in those early days. It seemed so incredible a contrivance, to make air that could be sent along pipes for miles from the place at which it was made to the place at which it issued as jets of fire, that it ran entirely counter to all preconceived notions on the subject of illumination. Even Sir Humphry Davy ridiculed the idea of lighting towns with gas, and asked one of the projectors if it were intended to take the dome of St. Paul’s for a gasometer; and Sir Walter Scott made many clever jokes about the absurdity of lighting London with smoke, though he shortly after adopted the said “smoke” for lighting up his own house at Abbotsford. It was popularly supposed that the gas was carried along the pipes on fire, and that hence the pipes must be intensely hot. Thus, when the House of Commons was first lighted up with gas, the architect insisted on the pipes being placed several inches from the wall for fear of fire, and members might be seen applying their gloved hands to them to ascertain their temperature, expressing the greatest surprise on their being found as cool as the adjoining walls.[358]
The advantages of the new light, however, soon became generally recognised; and gas companies were established in most of the large towns. Had Murdock patented the invention, it must have proved exceedingly remunerative to him; but he derived no advantage from the extended use of the new system of lighting except the honour of having initiated it,—though of this more than one attempt was made to deprive him. As he himself modestly said, in his paper read before the Royal Society, “I believe I may, without presuming too much, claim both the first idea of applying, and the first actual application of this gas to economical purposes.”
Murdock’s attention was, however, diverted from prosecuting his discovery of the uses of gas to a profitable issue by his daily business, which was of a very engrossing character. He continued, nevertheless, an almost incessant contriver, improver, and inventor; following, like his master Watt, the strong bent of his inclinations. One of his most cherished schemes was the employment of compressed air as a motive power. He contrived to work a little engine of 12-inch cylinder and 18-inch stroke, which drove the lathe in the pattern-shop, by means of the compressed air of the blast-engine employed in blowing the cupolas at the Soho Foundry; and this arrangement continued in use for a period of about thirty-five years. He also constructed a lift worked by compressed air, which raised and lowered the castings from the Boring-mill to the level of the Foundry and the Canal Bank.[359] He used the same kind of power to ring the bells in his house at Sycamore Hill; and the contrivance was afterwards adopted by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.[360] He experimented on the power of high-pressure steam in impelling shot, and contrived a steam-engine in 1803, with which he made many trials at Soho, in anticipation of Perkins’s apparatus. He was the inventor of the well-known cast-iron cement so extensively used in engine and machine work; and the manner in which he was led to it affords a striking illustration of his quickness of observation. Finding that some iron-borings and sal-ammoniac had got accidentally mixed together in his tool-chest and rusted his saw-blade nearly through, he took note of the circumstance, mixed the articles in various proportions, and at last arrived at the famous cement, which eventually became an article of extensive manufacture at the Soho works, completely superseding the cement invented by Watt. In 1810 he took out a patent for boring stone pipes for water, and cutting columns out of solid blocks by one operation. In 1815 he invented an apparatus for heating the water for the Baths at Leamington by the circulation of water through pipes from a boiler,—a method since extensively adopted for heating buildings and garden-houses. While occupied in erecting the apparatus at Leamington, a heavy cast-iron plate fell upon his leg and severely crushed it, laying him up for many months.
His ingenuity was constantly at work, even upon matters which lay entirely outside his special calling. Mr. Fairbairn informs us that he contrived a variety of curious machines for consolidating peat moss, finely ground and pulverised, under immense pressure, and moulding it into beautiful medals, armlets, and necklaces, which took the most brilliant polish, and had the appearance of the finest jet. Observing that fish-skins might be used as an economical substitute for isinglass, he went up to London to explain to the brewers the best method of preparing and using them.[361] While in town on this errand, it occurred to him that there was an enormous waste of power in the feet of men and animals treading the streets of London, which might be economised and made productive; and he conceived the idea of using the streets as a grand treadmill, under which the waste power was to be stored up by mechanical methods, and turned to account! Another of his ingenious schemes—though then thought equally impracticable with that last mentioned—was his proposed method of transmitting letters and packages through a tube exhausted by an air-pump. This idea seems to have led to the projection of the Atmospheric Railway, the success of which, so far as it went, was again due to the practical ability of Murdock’s pupil Samuel Clegg. Though the atmospheric railway was eventually abandoned, it is remarkable that Murdock’s original idea has since been revived, and practised with success, by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company.
Such is a brief sketch of the life and works of this estimable and ingenious mechanic, for so many years the mainstay of the Soho works. Mr. Fairbairn, who first made his friendship at Manchester in 1816, speaks of him as one of the most distinguished veterans in mechanical engineering then living,—“tall and well-proportioned in figure, with a most intelligent and benevolent expression of countenance.” He was a man of robust constitution, and though he sorely taxed it, he lived to an old age, surviving the elder Boulton and Watt by many years.[362]
MURDOCK’S HOUSE, SYCAMORE HILL, HANDSWORTH.[363]