A Practical Treatise on Gas-light: Exhibiting a Summary Description of the Apparatus and Machinery Best Calculated for Illuminating Streets, Houses, and Manufactories, with Carburetted Hydrogen, or Coal-Gas, with Remarks on the Utility, Safety, and General Nature of this new Branch of Civil Economy.Accum, Friedrich Christian
Science
A Practical Treatise on Gas-light: Exhibiting a Summary Description of the Apparatus and Machinery Best Calculated for Illuminating Streets, Houses, and Manufactories, with Carburetted Hydrogen, or Coal-Gas, with Remarks on the Utility, Safety, and General Nature of this new Branch of Civil Economy.
Accum, Friedrich Christian
Candles; Gas-lighting
“That of candles, to give the same light, would be about 2000_l._ For
each candle, consuming at the rate of 4-10ths of an ounce of tallow per
hour, the 2500 candles burning, upon an average of the year, two hours
per day, would, at one shilling per pound, the present price, amount to
nearly the sum of money above-mentioned.
“If the comparison were made upon an average of three hours per day, as
in most cases, would perhaps be nearer to the truth, and the tear and
wear remaining nearly the same as on the former case, the whole cost
would not exceed 650_l._ while that of the tallow would be 3000_l._”
Mr. ACKERMAN in this metropolis, has shown that the art of gas-light
illumination is not confined to great manufactories, but that its
advantages are equally applicable to those on a moderate scale. The
whole of Mr. ACKERMAN’s establishment, his public library, warehouse,
printing-offices and work-shops, together with his dwelling house, from
the kitchen to the drawing-room, has, for these four years past, been
lighted with gas, to the total exclusion of all other lights. The result
of the whole of this proceeding will be obvious from the following
letter:
To MR. ACCUM.
SIR,
“In answer to your request with regard to my gas-lights, which I now
have in my house, I take this mode of informing you, that I charge two
retorts with 240lbs. of coal, half cannel and half Newcastle, from
which I extract 1000 cubic feet of gas. To obtain this quantity of
gas, when the retorts are cold, I use from 100 to 110lb. of common
coals; but when they are in a working state, that is to say, when they
are once red hot, the carbonising fuel amounts to about 25lb. per
retort. The bulk of gas thus obtained supplies 40 Argand’s lamps, of
the large size, for four hours per night, during the long winter
evenings, together with eight Argand’s lamps and about 22 single
cockspur burners, for three hours per night: in addition to which my
printers employ 16 cockspur burners for ten hours per day to heat
their plates instead of charcoal fire. In the depth of winter we
charge two retorts per day: but, upon an average, we work 365 retorts
in 365 days.
Now 365 retorts containing 120lb. of coal each, make 43800lb. which is
equal to ten chaldrons of Newcastle and eight tons of cannel coal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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