THE BANISHMENT OF NIGHT 



GAS LIGHTING 



While the rivalry between the candle and the new 

 forms of lamps was at its height, and just as the lamp 

 was gaming complete supremacy, a new method of 

 artificial illumination was discovered that was destined 

 to eclipse all others for half a century, and then finally 

 to succumb to a still better form. As early as the be- 

 ginning of the eighteenth century the Rev. Joseph 

 Clayton, in England, had made experiments in the 

 distillation of coal, producing a gas that was inflam- 

 mable. A little later Dr. Stephen Hales published his 

 work on Vegetable Staticks, in which he described the 

 process of distilling coal in which a definite amount of 

 gas could be obtained from a given quantity of coal. 



No practical use was made of this discovery, however, 

 until over half a century later. But just at the close of 

 the century a Scot, William Murdoch, became interested 

 in the possibilities of gases as illuminants, and finally 

 demonstrated that coal gas could be put to practical 

 use. In 1798, being employed in the workshops of 

 Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, he fitted up an ap- 

 paratus in which he manufactured gas, lighting the work- 

 shops by means of jets connected by tubes with this 

 primitive plant. Shortly after this, a Frenchman, M. 

 Lebon, lighted his house in Paris with gas distilled from 

 wood, and the Parisians soon became interested in the 

 new illuminant. England seems to have been the first 

 country to use it extensively in public buildings, however, 

 the London Lyceum Theatre being lighted with gas in 

 1803. By 1810 the great Gas-Light and Coke Company 



[207] 



