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Gas. At present the most important means of lighting is by 
coal gas. It had been long known that an inflammable vapour 
was produced when coal was heated, but it is believed that Lord 
Dundonald was the first to convey such vapour in a pipe, when 
in 1787 he lit with a sort of bonfire blaze Culross Abbey. Ten 
years later Murdock, the manager, lit up Boulton & Watt’s 
workshops, and also supplied gas to some of his neighbours. 
This was followed in 1801, by M. Le Bon lighting his own house 
in Paris with gas from wood. In 1803, F. A. Winsor, who had 
seen Le Bon’s experiments succeeded in lighting the Lyceum 
Theatre, with coal gas, and in 1807 he lighted Pall Mall, and in 
1810, he formed the Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company, 
which still continues to be the largest gas manufacturer in the 
world. At first the purification of the gas was but little under- 
stood: now the waste products obtained in the process of 
purification are nearly equal in value to the gas. Superior 
means of burning are also being invented. In a Lighthouse as 
many as 108 jets of gas are concentrated together in rings, 
(in imitation of the 6 Argand wicks, one inside the other, for 
burning colza oil, and the lamp with 4 concentric wicks and a 
central brass button, invented by Captain Doty, for burning 
petroleum oil in lighthouses). 
Mention must here be made of the miner’s safety lamp. 
Formerly, many of the best coal mines were unworkable on 
account of the presence of inflammable gas, and the rudest 
methods were adopted to get light sufficient to enable the 
pitman to work. Stale fish skins were tried, but the faint 
phoshorescent light although safe was almost useless. The 
common plan was the ‘Steel mill,’ in which a notched wheel 
was caused to revolve against a flint by an attendant, while the 
miner tried to work as best he could. In 1818, Dr. Clany 
constructed an apparatus in which the air from the mine was 
supplied to the lamp through water by a pair of bellows. This 
was successful, as the lamp was extinguished when the gas was 
explosive, but it was too clumsy for general use. In November, 
1815, however, Sir Humphrey Davy, the wise philosopher, and 
the still wiser unlearned mechanic, George Stephenson, 
separately produced the ‘‘ Davy ’’ and the “ Geordy’”’ lamp, the 
latest modern lamp being more or less a compound of the two. 
But in the opinion of many the miner’s lamp and all other 
illuminants for every purpose will eventually be superseded by 
the Electric Light. 
The Execrric Licut is roughly divided into the two great 
divisions of the Incandescent Light and the Arc Light. The 
germ of the Incandescent light was discovered quite early in the 
knowledge of Electricity, when it was found that a small wire 
