662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and consumption, the high and easily regulated temperature it affords 

 beyond all other fuel, and the relatively email volume of products of 

 combustion evolved — being, in short, the most concentrated form of 

 gaseous fuel hitherto available for such purposes. To which he might 

 have added (if he had not been at the moment confining his comparisons 

 to gases) that its freedom from the impurities rife in mineral coals, and 

 that greatly restrict the supply of iron fit for refining, seems alone suf- 

 ficient to insure its substitution for all other fuel in the manufacture of 

 iron and steel. 



That Sweden has been first to move in this direction was natural, 

 from peculiar circumstances. This preeminence of "Swedes iron" 

 has been sustained under a singular disadvantage as to fuel. The 

 country is destitute of coal, and pays a monstrous tax on that grand 

 factor of its leading industry in the expense of importing it from Eng- 

 land. On the other hand, it possesses inexhaustible stores of peat, 

 which is well adapted to the manufacture of water-gas by the Ameri- 

 can process, and will henceforward supply the Swedes with that per- 

 fected form of fuel at a cost that will seem to them as nothing. 



The operations now going on in Stockholm under the superin- 

 tendence of Mr. Dwight were initiated by a semi-ofiicial body styled 

 the Jernkontoret (or Metallurgical Association), which, under the pa- 

 tronage of the Government, pursues whatever investigations and ex- 

 periments promise advantage to the grand interest of that country. 

 Its voluminous published researches and reports are of standard au- 

 thority in metallurgy all over the world. Water-gas making was 

 commenced with American apparatus erected in the Atlas Works, 

 Stockholm, in 1879, and the product applied to the treatment of iron- 

 ores and the manufacture of steel. An official certificate of unqualified 

 strength has been published under the signatures of leading Swedish 

 and Russian metallurgists, and new works on a practical scale are 

 now being established. The subject excited extraordinary interest 

 throughout the intelligent classes of the nation. Preparations were 

 also made to conduct the gas into various establishments and man- 

 sions for the purposes of warming and cooking. Orders have reached 

 New York for fuel-gas works of the same kind in St. Petersburg, 

 Russia, and preparations were making at the latest advices for similar 

 movements in Austria and Bohemia, as well as to press forward organ- 

 izations for the supply of American cities with both domestic fuel and 

 manufacturing power in this form. The introduction of a ubiquitous 

 motor (for the Otto silent gas-engine) as handy, cheap, and common 

 as the ordinary gaslight, will mark a new era in industry, and prove 

 an important new factor in political economy. 



