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
Another peculiar advantage of the gas flame is, that it may be applied
in any direction we please, as there is nothing to spill and the gas is
propelled by a certain force which is always the same, it will burn
equally well in an almost horizontal as in an upright position; and we
can thus obviate two great objections to all our artificial lights, that
their least luminous end is directed downwards where the light is
generally most wanted, and that a shade is cast below by the stand or
support of the combustible matter.
The size, shape and intensity of the gas-flame may be regulated by
simply turning a stop-cock which supplies the gas to the burner. It may
at command be made to burn with an intensity sufficient to illuminate
every corner of a room, or so low and dim as barely to be perceived. It
is unnecessary to point out how valuable such lights may be in
nurseries, stables, warehouses, in the chambers of the sick, &c.
From the facility with which the gas-flame can be conveyed in any
direction, from the diversified application, size and shape which the
flame can be made to assume, there is no other kind of light so well
calculated for being made the subject of splendid illuminations.
Where lustres are required in the middle of a room, the best mode of
conducting the gas to the chandelier, is to pass the gas-pipe through
the ceiling from the room above, immediately over the lustre. This can
be easily done without injury to the apartment.
Where side-lights and chandeliers are required the tubes need never
appear in sight, but may be concealed in the wall or floor of the
house. When transparencies are wanted as decorations for halls, lobbies,
&c. more than light, recesses may be filled with different coloured
_media_, or paintings, and any intensity of light may be thrown on the
object.
If a number of minute holes are made in the end of a gas pipe, it forms
as many _jets de feu_, which have a very brilliant appearance; these may
sometimes be placed in the focus of a parabolic reflector. In cases
where the light is required to be thrown to a distance, other burners
are constructed upon the same principle as the Argand lamp, forming a
cylinder of flame, and admitting a current of air both to the inside and
outside.
On comparing the flame of a gas-light with the flame of a candle
whatever its size may be, it appears just as yellow and dull as the
flame of a common lamp appears when compared with that of a lamp of
Argand. The beautiful whiteness of gas-light never fails to excite the
surprize and admiration of those who behold it for the first time.
A large edifice or manufactory lighted by gas, contrasted with one of
the same kind lighted by candles or lamps, resembles a street on the
night of a general illumination, compared with the glimmering light of
its ordinary parish lamps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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