HOW GAS WAS FIRST USED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 780, 30 March 1877, Page 4

HOW GAS WAS FIRST USED.

Great was the amusement of all England when at the close of the last century William Murdoch discovered the use of combustible uir or gas. So little was the invention understood or believed in by those who had not seen it in use that even great and wise men laughed at the idea. “ How could there be light without a wield” said a member of Parliament when the subject was brought before the House. Even Sir Humphrey Davy ridiculed the idea of lighting towns by gas, and asked one of the proprietors if they meant to take the dome of St. Haul’s for a gas-meter. Sir Walter Scott, too, made himself merry over the idea of illuminating London by smoke, though he was glad enough not so long after to make his own house at Abbotsford light and cheerful on winter nights by the use of that very smoke. When the House of Commons was lighted by gas, the architect imagined that the gas van on fire through the pipes, and he therefore insisted on their being placed several inches away from the wall, for fear of the building taking fire, and members might be seen carefully touching the pipes with their gloved hands and wondering they did not feel warm. The first shop lighted in London by the new method was Mr Ackevmann’s in the Strand, in 1810, and one lady of rank was so delighted wilh the brilliancy of the gaslamp on the counter that she asked to be allowed to take it linns in her carriage. Murdoch was, however, too busy with other pursuits to continue to study the use of gas, and though he was undoubtedly the first to apply it to practical purposes, many others laid claim to the honor, and other people quickly reaped the benefit of his cleverness and ingenuity. In tins he shared the general fate of inventors.—Coal Trade Journal.