"What a striking contrast between the appearance of the brilliantly illuminated streets at this time, compared with the days of Henry V. It is recorded, that in 1417, Sir Henry Barton, mayor of London, ordained 'lanterns with lights to bee hanged out on the winter evenings between Hallowtide and Candlemasse.' Paris was first lighted by an order issued in 1524; and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the streets being infested with robbers, the inhabitants were ordered to keep lights burning in the windows of all such houses as fronted the streets. In 1668, when some regulations were made for improving the streets of London, the inhabitants were reminded to hang out their lanterns at the usual time; and in 1690 an order was issued to hang out a light, or lamp, every night as soon as it was dark, from Michaelmas to Christmas. By an act of the common council in 1716, all housekeepers, whose houses fronted any street, lane, or passage, were required to hang out, every dark night, one or more lights, to burn from six to eleven o'clock, under the penalty of one shilling. In 1736, the lord mayor and common council applied to parliament for an act to enable them to erect lamps; and in 1744 they obtained farther powers for lighting the city. Birmingham was first lighted by lamps in 1733, so that in this improvement it preceded the metropolis."—Beckman's History of Inventions.
It may not be disagreeable to our readers to trace the brilliant lights by which the streets are illuminated, from the obscure recesses of nature, and to show by what steps that which was once thought simply an object of curiosity, has been applied to a practical purpose of the most useful and agreeable kind.
The inflammable gases were known originally for their direful effects rather than their useful qualities. Miners were acquainted with two of them, called the choke damp and the fire damp, long before the establishment of the Royal Society; but the earliest printed account of either occurs in its Transactions, in the year 1667. The paper in which it is contained, is entitled, "A Description of a Well and Earth in Lancashire taking Fire, by a Candle approaching to it. Imparted by Thomas Shirley, Esq an eye-witness."
Dr. Stephen Hales was the first person who procured an elastic fluid from the actual distillation of coal. His experiments with this object are related in the first volume of his Vegetable Statics, published in 1726. From the distillation of "one hundred and fifty-eight grains of Newcastle coal, he states that he obtained one hundred and eighty cubic inches of air, which weighed fifty-one grains, being nearly one third of the whole." The inflammability of the fluid he thus produced was no part of his inquiry; and though it is now deemed its most useful and important property, appears to have excited no attention till several years after.
In the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1733, some properties of coal-gas are detailed in a paper called, "An Account of the Damp Air in a Coal-pit of Sir James Lowther, sunk within Twenty Yards of the Sea." This paper, as it contains some striking facts relating to the inflammability and other properties of coal-gas, is deserving of particular attention.
The principal properties of coal-gas are here related with remarkable minuteness and precision; and as the writer exhibited them to different members of the Royal Society, and showed that after keeping the gas sometime, it still retained its elasticity and inflammability, it is remarkable, that the philosophers of the time undertook no experiments with the view of applying it to useful purposes.
Dr. John Clayton, in an extract from a letter in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1735, calls gas the "spirit" of coal; and came to a knowledge of its inflammability by an accident. This "spirit" chanced to catch fire, by coming in contact with a candle, as it was escaping from a fracture in one of his distillatory vessels. By preserving the gas in bladders, he frequently diverted his friends, by exhibiting its inflammability. This is the nearest approach to the idea of practically applying this property.
The subject attracted the attention of Dr. Richard Watson, who published the results of his researches in the second volume of his "Chemical Essays." He dwells upon the elasticity and inflammability of coal-gas; and remarked, that it retains these properties after passing through a great quantity of water.
The man who first applied the inflammability of gas to the purposes of illumination, was Mr. Murdoch. This gentleman, residing at Soho, near Birmingham, that hot-bed of ingenuity and mechanical science, on occasion of the celebration of the peace of 1802, covered the works of Soho with a light and splendour that astonished and delighted all the population of the surrounding country. Mr. Murdoch had not attained to this perfection without having had many difficulties to encounter. In the year 1792, he used coal gas for lighting his house and offices, at Redruth, in Cornwall; and in 1797 he again made a similar use of it at Old Cunnock, in Ayrshire. At Soho, he constructed an apparatus which enabled him to exhibit his plan on a larger scale than any he had heretofore attempted. His experiments were then seduously continued, with the able assistance of Mr. Southern and Mr. Henry Creighton, with a view to ascertain not only the best modes of making, but also of purifying and burning gas, so as to prevent either the smell or the smoke from being offensive.
Previous to the public display made of the illuminating properties of gas, at Soho, it had been applied to similar purposes, by a M. Le Bon, of Paris. A friend of the gentlemen at Soho, wrote from Paris a letter, dated November 8, 1801, to that establishment, informing them, that a person had lighted up his house and gardens with the gas obtained from wood and coal, and had it in contemplation to light up the city of Paris. This is an important fact in the detail of the history of gas-lighting; and we should be glad of further information respecting the steps which led M. Le Bon to the results which he appears to have obtained, and also respecting the fortunes which subsequently attended the invention in France. However, M. Le Bon's exhibitions have a remarkable connexion with the progress of the invention in England: they seem, indeed, almost to have diverted it from its natural course, which certainly would have led from the illumination at Soho to its public adoption.