66o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



most perfect methods of combustion and utilization known in the arts. 

 But in these methods, according to standard authorities, at least five 

 times as much of the fuel is utilized as in the average of stoves. The 

 practical heating value of our domestic fuel may therefore be multi- 

 plied fourteen times (5 X 2"78) by using it to make water-gas. 



But, again, the material actually used at Mount Vernon in making 

 the water-gas analyzed by Professor Moore, instead of being our domes- 

 tic fuel, worth from four to six dollars per ton in New York, was most- 

 ly nothing but waste coal-dust, dug up from an old " fill," where it had 

 been used in grading the street ; and when the gas product itself is 

 reapplied to making and superheating the steam — as, of course, it will, 

 be — the use of merchantable coal may be entirely dispensed with. Of 

 the refuse dust we have literal mountains accumulated at our coal- 

 mines and depots, as well as constant deposits at every coal-yard, which 

 the proprietors would now be glad to have taken away gratis. Mak- 

 ing ample allowance for the expense of appropriating these supplies 

 of coal-dust, and allowing only the lowest price of chestnut coal for 

 the article consumed in our stoves and furnaces, we can multiply the 

 present equivalent for our domestic coal bill at least three times more 

 by the gas process — less the charges for invention and organization, 

 capital and interest, manufacturing management, and distribution. 

 The proprietors propose to have the fuel-gas delivered at fifty cents 

 per one thousand feet, with a good margin of profit, as it can even now 

 be made for ten cents. Compared with illuminating coal-gas by vol- 

 ume, its heating power is found to be about as three to five. Hence, 

 coal-gas at eighty-five cents would be as cheap fuel as water-gas at 

 fifty. But, in point of profit to the maker, the difference at these 

 prices would be greatly in favor of the water-gas ; while, in another 

 controlling matter, on the side of the consumer, it is not malapropos to 

 say that comparisons are " odorous." The mysterious but not agree- 

 able smell raised by a coal-gas jet of the best air-mixing or total-com- 

 bustion burner, when impinging on the surface of any cooking utensil 

 (thought by Professor Wurtz to arise perhaps from a synthetic re-for- 

 mation of gas) is a serious objection to coal-gas cooking, from which 

 water-gas is absolutely free. Its combustion is perfect, without air- 

 mixture, and without smell, " synthetic " or whatever. So far as the hy- 

 drogen is concerned, the product of combustion is pure aqueous vapor, 

 in a quantity not likely to overcharge with moisture the atmosj^here of 

 the house. The other principal ingredient, thirty-six per cent, of car- 

 bonic oxide, becomes, of course, carbonic acid in bui-ning, and must be 

 conducted away. 



Using a Goodwin's gas-stove to its full capacity at once as baker, 

 broiler, and boiler — simultaneously baking bread and potatoes, boiling 

 other vegetables and coffee, and broiling steaks and chops, sufficient 

 for a dinner-party of " experts" — Mr. Strong found the time thirty min- 

 utes, and the consumption of gas thirty-two and a half feet, or sixty- 



