Gas lighting is the production of artificial light by burning a fuel gas. Light may be produced directly by the flame or indirectly by heating another material to incandescence, as in a gas mantle or limelight. During the period when gas lighting was widespread, its principal fuel was coal gas; natural gas later replaced coal gas in many places.
Experiments with combustible gases preceded the practical development of gas lighting, but widespread use began in the early 19th century. William Murdoch demonstrated coal-gas lighting in Britain in the 1790s and early 1800s, and gas lighting subsequently spread through cities in Europe and North America. During the 19th century it was used extensively for streets, homes, factories, and theatres. In theatres, gas lighting allowed brighter stages and more centralized control of illumination, but also created heat, fire, and explosion hazards.
From the late 19th century, gas lighting was progressively displaced by electric lighting as electrical distribution systems improved. It nevertheless survives in some historic districts, where gas street lamps are preserved or restored. Berlin retains the world's largest network of gas street lamps. Gas is still occasionally used for camp lighting.
History of gas lighting
Background
Prior to use of gaseous fuels for lighting, the early lighting fuels consisted of olive oil, beeswax, fish oil, whale oil, sesame oil, nut oil, or other similar substances, which were all liquid fuels. These were the most commonly used fuels until the late 18th century. Whale oil was especially widely used for lighting in European cities such as London through the early 19th century.
Chinese records dating back 1,700 years indicate the use of natural gas in homes for lighting and heating. The natural gas was transported by means of bamboo pipes to homes. Citing
Public illumination preceded the adoption of gas lighting by centuries. In 1417, Sir Henry Barton, Lord Mayor of London, ordained "Lanthornes with lights to bee hanged out on the Winter evening betwixt Hallowtide and Candlemasse." Paris was first illuminated by an order issued in 1524, and, in the beginning of the 16th century, the inhabitants were ordered to keep lights burning in the windows of all houses that faced streets. In 1668, when some regulations were made for improving the streets of London, the residents were reminded to hang out their lanterns at the usual time, and, in 1690, an order was issued to hang out a light, or lamp, every night at nightfall, from Michaelmas to Christmas. By an Act of the Common Council in 1716, all housekeepers, whose houses faced any street, lane, or passage, were required to hang out, every dark night, one or more lights, to burn from six to eleven o'clock, under the penalty of one shilling as a fine for failing to do so.
Accumulating and escaping gases were known originally among coal miners for their adverse effects rather than their useful characteristics. Coal miners described two types of gases, one called the choke damp and the other fire damp. In 1667, a paper describing how in Lancashire gas escaping from a coal pit underground could be lit at the surface of a nearby spring.
British clergyman and scientist Stephen Hales experimented with the actual distillation of coal, thereby obtaining a flammable liquid. He reported his results in the first volume of his Vegetable Statics, published in 1726. From the distillation of "one hundred and fifty-eight grains [10.2 g] of Newcastle coal, he stated that he obtained 180 cubic inches [2.9 L] of gas, which weighed 51 grains [3.3 g], being nearly one third of the whole." Hales's results garnered attention decades later as the unique chemical properties of various gases became understood through the work of Joseph Black, Henry Cavendish, Alessandro Volta, and others.
A 1733 publication by Sir James Lowther in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society detailed some properties of coal gas, including its flammability. Lowther demonstrated the principal properties of coal gas to different members of the Royal Society. He showed that the gas retained its flammability after storage for some time. The demonstration did not result in identification of utility.
Minister and experimentalist John Clayton referred to coal gas as the "spirit" of coal. He discovered its flammability by an accident. The "spirit" he isolated from coal caught fire by coming in contact with a candle as it escaped from a fracture in one of his distillation vessels. He stored the coal gas in bladders, and at times he entertained his friends by demonstrating the flammability of the gas. Clayton published his findings in Philosophical Transactions.
Early technology
It took nearly 200 years for gas to become accessible for commercial use. A Flemish alchemist, Jan Baptista van Helmont, was the first person to formally recognize gas as a state of matter. He would go on to identify several types of gases, including carbon dioxide. Over one hundred years later in 1733, Sir James Lowther had some of his miners working on a water pit for his mine. While digging the pit they hit a pocket of gas. Lowther took a sample of the gas and took it home to do some experiments. He noted, "The said air being put into a bladder … and tied close, may be carried away, and kept some days, and being afterwards pressed gently through a small pipe into the flame of a candle, will take fire, and burn at the end of the pipe as long as the bladder is gently pressed to feed the flame, and when taken from the candle after it is so lighted, it will continue burning till there is no more air left in the bladder to supply the flame." Lowther had basically discovered the principle behind gas lighting.
Later in the 18th century William Murdoch (sometimes spelled "Murdock") stated: "the gas obtained by distillation from coal, peat, wood and other inflammable substances burnt with great brilliancy upon being set fire to … by conducting it through tubes, it might be employed as an economical substitute for lamps and candles." Murdoch's first invention was a lantern with a gas-filled bladder attached to a jet. He would use this to walk home at night. After seeing how well this worked he decided to light his home with gas. In 1797, Murdoch installed gas lighting in his new home as well as the workshop in which he worked. "This work was of a large scale, and he next experimented to find better ways of producing, purifying, and burning the gas." The foundation had been laid for companies to start producing gas and other inventors to start playing with ways of using the new technology.
Murdoch was the first to exploit the flammability of gas for the practical application of lighting. He worked for Matthew Boulton and James Watt at their Soho Foundry steam engine works in Birmingham, England. In the early 1790s, while overseeing the use of his company's steam engines in tin mining in Cornwall, Murdoch began experimenting with various types of gas, finally settling on coal gas as the most effective. He first lit his own house in Redruth, Cornwall in 1792. In 1798, he used gas to light the main building of the Soho Foundry and in 1802 lit the outside in a public display of gas lighting, the lights astonishing the local population. One of the employees at the Soho Foundry, Samuel Clegg, saw the potential of this new form of lighting. Clegg left his job to set up his own gas lighting business, the Gas Light and Coke Company.
A "thermolampe" using gas distilled from wood was patented in 1799, while German inventor Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) was the first person to patent coal-gas lighting in 1804.
In 1801, Phillipe Lebon of Paris had also used gas lights to illuminate his house and gardens, and was considering how to light all of Paris. In 1820, Paris adopted gas street lighting.
In 1804, William Henry delivered a course of lectures on chemistry, at Manchester, in which he showed the mode of producing gas from coal, and the facility and advantage of its use. Henry analysed the composition and investigated the properties of carburetted hydrogen gas (i.e. methane). His experiments were numerous and accurate and made upon a variety of substances; having obtained the gas from wood, peat, different kinds of coal, oil, wax, etc., he quantified the intensity of the light from each source.
In 1806 The Philips and Lee factory and a portion of Chapel Street in Salford, Lancashire were lit by gas, thought to be the first use of gas street lighting in the world.
Josiah Pemberton, an inventor, had for some time been experimenting on the nature of gas. A resident of Birmingham, his attention may have been roused by the exhibition at Soho. About 1806, he exhibited gas lights in a variety of forms and with great brilliance at the front of his factory in Birmingham. In 1808 he constructed an apparatus, applicable for several uses, for Benjamin Cooke, a manufacturer of brass tubes, gilt toys, and other articles.
In 1808, Murdoch presented to the Royal Society a paper entitled "Account of the Application of Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes" in which he described his successful application of coal gas to light the extensive establishment of Messrs. Phillips and Lea. For this paper he was awarded Count Rumford's gold medal. Murdoch's statements threw great light on the comparative advantage of gas and candles, and contained much useful information on the expenses of production and management.
Although the history is uncertain, David Melville has been credited with the first house and street lighting in the United States, in either 1805 or 1806 in Newport, Rhode Island.
In 1809, accordingly, the first application was made to Parliament to incorporate a company in order to accelerate the process, but the bill failed to pass. In 1810, however, the application was renewed by the same parties, and though some opposition was encountered and considerable expense incurred, the bill passed, but not without great alterations; and the London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company was established. Less than two years later, on 31 December 1813, Westminster Bridge was lit by gas.
Widespread use
Among the economic impacts of gas lighting was much longer work hours in factories. This was particularly important in Great Britain during the winter months when nights are significantly longer. Factories could even work continuously over 24 hours, resulting in increased production. Following successful commercialization, gas lighting spread to other countries.
In England, the first place outside London to have gas lighting was Preston, Lancashire, in 1816; this was due to the Preston Gaslight Company run by revolutionary Joseph Dunn, who found the most improved way of brighter gas lighting. The parish church there was the first religious building to be lit by gas lighting.
In Bristol, a Gas Light Company was founded on 15 December 1815. Under the supervision of the engineer, John Brelliat, extensive works were conducted in 1816–17 to build a gasholder, mains and street lights. Many of the principal streets in the centre of the city, as well as nearby houses, had switched to gas lighting by the end of 1817.
In America, Seth Bemis lit his factory with gas illumination from 1812 to 1813. The use of gas lights in Rembrandt Peale's Museum in Baltimore in 1816 was a great success. Baltimore was the first American city with gas street lights; Peale's Gas Light Company of Baltimore on 7 February 1817 lit its first street lamp at Market and Lemon Streets (currently Baltimore and Holliday Streets). The first private residence in the US to be illuminated by gas has been variously identified as that of David Melville (c. 1806), as described above, or of William Henry, a coppersmith, at 200 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816.