A PRACTICAL TREATISE 



ON 



THE MANUFACTURE AND DISTRIBUTION 



OF 



COAL-GAS. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE INTRODUCTION OF LIGHTING BY 



COAL-GAS. 



IN the earliest ages, and prior to the time from which records of extraordinary 

 events have been handed down to us, the existence of an inflammable air 

 appears to have been known. The perpetual fires and sacred lamps, regarded 

 with superstition by the ancients, were fed by inflammable air issuing from 

 fissures of rocks or springs of petroleum. The choke and fire-damp, so fatal 

 in the experience of miners, was in modern times discovered to be the same 

 gas, now so valuable for the purposes of illumination. 



Although both its useful and injurious properties appear thus to have been 

 long partially known, no investigation of its nature was made, at least none 

 published, until the end of February, 1659, when Mr. Thomas Shirley com- 

 municated to the Royal Society some experiments upon the gas issuing from a 

 well near Wigan in Lancashire. This paper will be found in the Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions for June, 1667, and has also been published in former works 



B 



