Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

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.