Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Great, however, as the economic results of the gas-producer have been,
its inventor looked forward to still more remarkable applications
of it. In 1882 he told the British Association, in his presidential
address, that he thought “the time is not far distant when both
rich and poor will largely resort to gas as the most convenient, the
cleanest, and the cheapest of heating agents, and when raw coal will
be seen only at the colliery or the gas-works. In all cases where the
town to be supplied is within, say, thirty miles of the colliery,
the gas-works may with advantage be planted at the mouth, or, still
better, at the bottom of the pit, whereby all haulage of fuel would be
avoided, and the gas, in its ascent from the bottom of the colliery,
would acquire an onward pressure sufficient probably to impel it to its
destination. The possibility of transporting combustible gas through
pipes for such a distance has been proved at Pittsburg, where natural
gas from the oil district is used in large quantities.” It may be
well to point out here that as a step towards this, it was a favorite
project of his—practically carried out in some places—to divide the
gaseous products of the ordinary distillation of coal into two, the
middle portions being illuminating gas of 18 to 20 candle power instead
of 16, and the first and last portions, which under this system may
be largely increased, being heating gas; such gas he expected to see
sold at 1_s._ per 1,000 cubic feet. The obvious and only practicable
objection to the plan is the necessity for doubling all the mains
and service-pipes. That we shall eventually burn gaseous fuel on the
domestic hearth, as we have lately learnt to do on the metallurgical,
I have not the smallest doubt; it is a mere question of the time
necessary for the education of the public mind upon the question; the
apter the pupil, the more speedy will be the desired result. Let it be
thoroughly understood by every one that the soot which hangs in a pall
over London in a single day is _equivalent to at least fifty tons of
coal_, and then there will be no difficulty in seeing that the true and
the only remedy for our London fogs, with all their attendant ills,
is—gaseous fuel. May we not hope that, though Sir William Siemens has
gone from among us, the great movement for smoke abatement, in which he
so earnestly labored during the last three years of his life, may have
full effect?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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