The spread of
gas lighting
Following this success, gas lighting spread to other countries. The use of
gas lights in Rembrandt Peale's
Museum in Baltimore in
1816 was a great success. Baltimore was the first American city with gas
streetlights, provided by Peale's Gas Light Company of Baltimore.
The first place, outside of London in England to
have gas lighting, was Preston,
Lancashire in 1825, this was
due to the Preston Gaslight
Company run by
revolutionary Joseph Dunn, who
found the most improved way of brighter gas lighting.
The first private residence in the US illuminated by gas was that of
William Henry, a coppersmith,
at 200 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Among the economic impacts of gas lighting was much longer work hours in
factories. This was particularly important in Great Britain during the
winter months when nights are significantly longer. Factories could even
work continuously over 24 hours, resulting in increased production.
In 1817, at the three stations of the Chartered Gas Company, 25 chaldrons (24
m³) of coal were carbonizeddaily,
producing 300,000 cubic feet (8,500 m³) of gas. This supplied gas lamps
equal to 75,000 Argand lamps each
yielding the light of six candles. At the City Gas Works, in Dorset
Street, Blackfriars, three
chaldrons of coal were carbonized each day, providing the gas equivalent
of 9,000 Argand lamps. So 28 chaldrons of coal were carbonized daily, and
84,000 lights supplied by those two companies only.
At this period the principal difficulty in gas manufacture was
purification. Mr. D. Wilson, of Dublin, patented a
method for purifying coal-gas by means of the chemical action of ammoniacal gas.
Another plan was devised by Mr. Reuben Phillips, of Exeter,
who patented the purification of coal-gas by the use of dry lime.
Mr. G. Holworthy, in 1818, patented a method of purifying it by causing
the gas, in a highly condensed state, to pass through iron retorts heated
to a dark red.
By 1823, numerous towns and cities throughout Britain were lit by gas.
Gaslight cost up to 75% less than oil
lamps or candles, which helped
to accelerate its development and deployment. By 1859, gas lighting was to
be found all over Britain and about a thousand gas
works had sprung up to meet the
demand for the new fuel. The brighter lighting which gas provided allowed
people to read more easily and for longer. This helped to stimulate
literacy and learning, speeding up the second Industrial
Revolution.
Oil-gas appeared in the field
as a rival of coal-gas. In 1815, John Taylor patented an apparatus for the
decomposition of "oil" and other animal substances. Public attention was
attracted to "oil-gas" by the display of the patent apparatus at Apothecary's
Hall, by Messrs. Taylor and Martineau.
In 1891, the invention of the gas
mantle by the Austrian chemist Carl
Auer von Welsbach eliminated
the need for special illuminating gas, a synthetic mixture of hydrogen and hydrocarbon gases
produced by destructive
distillation of bituminous
coal or peat,
to get bright shining flames.
Illuminating gas was used for
gas lighting, as it produces a much brighter light than natural
gas or water
gas. Illuminating gas was much less toxic than other forms of coal-gas,
but less could be produced from a given quantity of coal. The experiments
with distilling coal were described by John Clayton in 1684. George
Dixon's pilot plant exploded in 1760, setting back the production of
illuminating gas a few years. The first commercial application was in a Manchester cotton
mill in 1806. In 1901, studies
of thedefoliant effect of
leaking gas pipes led
to the discovery that ethylene is a plant
hormone.
Throughout the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th, the
gas was manufactured by the gasification of
coal. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, natural gas began to
replace coal-gas, first in the US, and then in other parts of the world.
In the United Kingdom, coal-gas was used until the early 1970s.
