History of manufactured gas

The history of manufactured gas, important for lighting, heating, and cooking purposes throughout most of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, began with the development of analytical and pneumatic chemistry in the eighteenth century. The manufacturing process typically consisted of the gasification of combustible materials, almost always coal, but also wood and oil. The coal was gasified by heating the coal in enclosed ovens. Coal heated in an oxygen-poor atmosphere gives off gases, including hydrogen, methane, and ethylene, all of which can be burnt for heating and lighting purposes. Coal gas, however, also contains significant quantities of sulphur and ammonia compounds, as well as heavy hydrocarbons, and so the gas needed to be purified before it could be used in most contexts.

As eighteenth century natural philosophers and practical chemists understood the nature and properties of gases better during the Chemical Revolution, they also realized that gas could be produced, purified, and stored, used in a variety of ways. The pioneering attempts at manufacturing gas occurred in this context.

The first attempts to manufacture gas in a commercial way were made in period 1795-1805 in France by Philippe Lebon, and in England by William Murdock. Although precursors can be found, it was these two engineers who elaborated the technology with commercial applications in mind. Frederick Winsor was the key player behind the creation of the first gas utility, the London based Gas Light and Coke Company, incorporated by royal charter in April of 1812.

Many other manufactured gas utilities were founded first in England, and then in the rest of Europe and North America in the 1820s. The technology increased in scale. After a period of competition, the business model of the gas industry matured in monopolies, where a single company provided gas in a given zone. The ownership of the companies varied from outright municipal ownership, such as in Manchester, to completely private corporations, such as in London and most North American cities. Gas companies thrived during most of the nineteenth century, usually returning good profits to their shareholders, but were also the subject of many complaints over price.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the gas industry diversified out of lighting and into heat and cooking. The threat from electrical light in the later 1870s and 1880s drove this trend strongly. The gas industry did not cede the lighting market to electricity immediately, as the invention of the Welsbach mantle in the late 1880s dramatically increased the luminosity of gas flames, and gas remained competitive with electricity. Other technological developments in the late nineteenth century include the use of water gas and power stoking, although these were not universally adopted.

In the 1890s, pipelines from natural gas field in Texas and Oklahoma were built to Chicago and other cities, and natural gas was used to supplement manufactured gas supplies, eventually completely displacing it. Gas ceased to be manufactured in North America before the Second World War, while it continued in Europe until the 1960s. Manufactured gas is experiencing a resurgence as energy utilities look towards coal gasification once again as a potentially cleaner way of generating power from coal.

Early history of manufactured gas

Precursors

Pneumatic chemistry developed in the eighteenth century with the work of scientists such as Stephen Hales, Joseph Black, Joseph Priestley, and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, and others. Until the eighteenth century, gas was not recognized as a separated state of matter. Rather, while some of the mechanical properties of gases were understood, as typified by Robert Boyle's experiments and the development of the air pump, its chemical properties were not. Gases were regarded in keeping the Aristotelean tradition of four elements as being air, one of the four fundamental elements. The different sorts of airs, such as putrid airs or inflammable air, were looked upon as atmospheric air with some impurities, much like muddied water.

After Joseph Black realized that carbon dioxide was in fact a different sort of gas altogether from atmospheric air, other gases were identified, including hydrogen by Henry Cavendish in 1766. Alessandro Volta expanded the list with his discovery of methane in 1776. It had also been known for a long time that inflammable gases could be produced from most combustible materials, such as coal and wood, through the process of distillation. Stephen Hales, for example, had written about the phenomenon in the "Vegetable Staticks" in 1722. In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, as more gases were being discovered and the techniques and instruments of pneumatic chemistry became more sophisticated, and number of natural philosophers and engineers thought about using gases in medical and industrial applications. One of first such uses was ballooning beginning in 1783, but other uses soon followed. [Kim]

One of the results of the ballooning craze of 1783-1784 was the first implementation of lighting by manufactured gas. A professor of natural philosophy at the University of Louvain Jan Pieter Minckeleers and two of his colleagues were asked by their patron, the Duke of Arenberg, to investigate ballooning. They did so, building apparatus to generate lighter than air inflammable gases from coal and other inflammable substances. In 1785 Minckeleers used some of this apparatus to gasify coal to light his lecture hall at the university. He did not extend gas lighting much beyond this, and when he was forced to flee Leuven during the Brabant Revolution, he abandoned the project altogether. [Jaspers]

Philippe Lebon and the Thermolamp

Philippe Lebon was a French civil engineer working in the public engineering corps who became interested while at university in distillation as an industrial process for the manufacturing of materials such as tar and oil. He graduated from the engineering school in 1789, and was assigned to Angouleme. There, he investigated distillation further, and became more aware that the gas produced in the distillation of wood and coal could also be a useful byproduct for lighting, heating, and even as an energy source in engines. He took out a patent for distillation processes in 1794, and continued his research, eventually designing a distillation oven that came to be known as the "thermolamp". He applied for and received a patent for this invention in 1799, with an addition in 1801. He launched a marketing campaign in Paris in 1801 by printed a pamphlet and renting a house where he put on public demonstrations with his apparatus. His goal was to raise sufficient funds from investors to launch a company, but he failed to attract this sort of interest, either from the French state or from private sources. He was forced to abandon the project and return to the civil engineering corps. Although he was given a forest concession by the French government to experiment with the manufacture of tar from wood for naval use, he never succeed with the thermolamp, and died in uncertain circumstances in 1805. [Veillerette]

Although the themolamp received some interest in France, it was in Germany that the interest was the greatest. A number of books and articles were written on the subject in the period 1802-1812. There were also thermolamps designed and built in Germany, the most important of which were by Zachaus Winzler, a Moravian chemist who ran a salpetre factory in Blansko. Under the patronage of the aristocratic zu Salm family, he built a large one in Bruno. He later moved to Vienna to further his work there. The thermolamp, however, was used primarily for making charcoal and not for the production of gases. [Elton, HalvaDenk]

William Murdock and Boulton & Watt

William Murdoch (sometimes Murdock) (1754–1839) was an engineer working for the firm of Boulton & Watt, when, while investigating distillation processes sometime in 1792-1794, he also started to use coal gas for illumination. He was living in Redruth in Cornwall at the time, and made some small scale experiments with lighting his own house with coal gas. He soon thereafter dropped the subject until 1798, when he moved to Birmingham to work at Boulton & Watt's home base of Soho. Boulton & Watt then instigate another small scale series of experiments, but with ongoing patent litigation and their main line of business, steam engines, to attend to, the subject was dropped once again. Gregory Watt, James Watt's second son, while traveling in Europe saw Lebon's demonstrations and wrote a letter to his brother, James Watt junior, informing him of this potential competitor. This prompted James Watt junior to begin a gaslight development program at Boulton & Watt that would scale up the technology and lead to the first commercial applications of gaslight. [Griffith, Chandler and Lacey]

After an initial installation at the Soho Foundry in 1803-1804, Boulton & Watt prepared an apparatus for the textile firm of Philips & Lee in Salford near Manchester in 1805-1806. This was to be their only major sale until late 1808. George Augustus Lee was a major motivating force behind the development of the apparatus. He had an avid interest in technology, and had introduced a series of technological innovations at the Salford Mill, such as iron frame construction and steam heating. The continued to encourage the development of gaslight technology at Boulton & Watt. [Griffith, Chandler and Lacey]

Winsor and the Gas Light and Coke Company

The first company to provide manufactured gas to consumer as a utility was the London based Gas Light and Coke Company. It was founded through the efforts of a German émigré, Frederick Winsor, who had witnessed Lebon's demonstrations in Paris. He had tried unsuccessfully to purchase a thermolamp from Lebon, but remained taken with the technology, and decided to try his luck, first in his hometown of Brunswick, and then in London in 1804. Once in London, Winsor began an intense marketing campaign to find investors for a new company that would manufacture gas apparatus and sell gas to consumers. He was quite success in finding willing investors, but the legal form of the company was a more difficult problem. By the Bubble Act of 1720, all joint-stock companies above a certain number of shareholders in England needed to receive a royal charter to be incorporate, which meant in effect that an act of Parliament was required.

Winsor waged his campaign intermittently to 1807, when the investors constituted a committee charged with obtaining an act of Parliament. They pursued this task over the next three years, running into forms various adversity along the way, the most important of which was the resistance on part of Boulton & Watt in 1809. In that year, the committee made a serious attempt to get the House of Commons to pass a bill empowering the king to grant the charter, but Boulton & Watt felt their gaslight apparatus manufacturing business was threatened and mounted an opposition through their allies in Parliament. Although the a Parliamentary committee recommended approval, it went down to defeat on the third reading.

The following year, the committee tried again, succeeding with the acquiescence of Boulton & Watt because they renounced all powers to manufacture apparatus for sale. The act required that the company raise £100,000 before they could request a charter, a condition it took the next two years to fill. George III granted the charter in 1812.

Manufactured gas 1812-1825

Manufactured gas in England

[
Frederick Accum's "A Practical Treatise on Gas-light" (1815)] From 1812 to approximately 1825, manufactured gas was predominantly an English technology. A number of new gas utilities were founded to serve London and other cities in the UK in the years after 1812. Liverpool, Exeter, and Preston were the first in 1816, but others soon followed, so that by 1821, no town with population less than 50,000 was without gaslight. Five years later, there were only two towns over 10,000 that were without gaslight. [Falkus p. 498] . Within London itself, the growth of gaslight was rapid. New companies were founded within a few years of the Gas Light and Coke Company, and a period of intense competition soon followed as companies competed for consumers on the boundaries of their respective zones of operations. Frederick Accum, in the various editions of his book on gaslight, gives a good sense of how rapidly the technology spread in the capital. In 1815, he wrote that there were 4000 lamps in the city, served by convert|26|mi|km of mains. In 1819, he raised his estimate to 51,000 lamps and convert|288|mi|km of mains. Likewise, there was only two gasworks in London in 1814, and by 1822, there were seven. [Chandler p. 72] The government did not regulate the industry as a whole until 1816, when an act of Parliament created and a post of inspector for gasworks, the first holder of which was Sir William Congreve. Even then, no laws were passed regulating the entire industry until 1847, although a bill was proposed in 1822, which failed due to opposition from gas companies. [Chandler p. 83] The charters approved by Parliament did, however, contain various regulations such as how the companies could break up the pavement, etc.

Manufactured gas in Europe and North America

France's first gas company was also promoted by Frederick Winsor after he had to flee England in 1814 due to unpaid debts and tried to found another gas company in Paris, but it failed in 1819. The government was also interested in promoting the industry, and in 1817 commissioned Chabrol de Volvic to study the technology and build a prototype plant, also in Paris. The plant provided gas for lighting the hôpital Saint Louis, and the experiment was judged successful. [Williot p. 29-30] King Louis XVIII then decided to give further impulse to the development of the French industry by sending people to England to study the situation there, and to install gaslight at a number of prestigious buildings, such as the Opera building, the national library, etc. A public company was created for this purpose in 1818. [Williot p. 33-4] Private companies soon followed, and by 1822, when the government moved to regulate the industry, there were four in operation in the capital. The regulations passed then prevented the companies from competing, and Paris was effectively divided between the various companies operating as monopolies in their own zones. [Wiliot p. 47-8]

Gaslight also spread to other European countries. In 1817, a company was founded in Brussels by P. J. Meeus-Van der Maelen, and began operating the following year. By 1822, there were companies in Amsterdam and Rotterdam using English technology. [Körting p. 89] In Germany, gaslight was used on a small scale from 1816 onwards, but the first gaslight utility was founded by the by English engineers and capital. In 1824, the Imperial Continental Gas Association was founded in London to establish gas utilities in other countries. Sir William Congreve, one if its leaders, signed an agreement with the government in Hannover, and the gas lamps were used on streets for the first time in 1826. [Körting p. 104-5, 107]

Gaslight was first introduced to the US in 1816 in Baltimore by Rembrant and Rubens Peale, who lit their museum with gaslight, which they had seen on a trip to Europe. The brothers convinced a group of wealthy people to back them in a larger enterprise, and, the local government passed a law allowing the Peales and their associates to lay mains and light the streets. A company was incorporated for this purpose in 1817. After some difficulties with the apparatus and financial problems, the company hired an English engineer with experience in gaslight. It began to flourish, and by the 1830s, the company was supplying gas to 3000 domestic customers and 100 street lamps. [Erlick p. 9-17] Companies in other cities followed, the second being New York in 1825. [Castaneda 27]

Basics of Machinery

The basic design of gaslight apparatus was established by Boulton & Watt and Samuel Clegg in the period 1805-1812. Further improvements were made at the Gas Light and Coke Company, as well as by the growing number of gas engineers such as John Malam and Thomas Peckston after 1812. Boulton & Watt contributed the basic design of the retort, condensor, and gasometer, while Clegg improved the gasometer and introduced lime purification and the hydraulic main, another purifier.

Retorts were usually made of cast iron, but other materials were tried as well. Early gas engineers experimented extensively with the best shape, size, and setting to adopt. No one form of retort came to dominate, and many different cross-sections remained in use.

References

Better references coming...

External sources