In the following year a German named Wintzer, or Winsor, appeared as the promotor of a scheme for obtaining a royal charter with extensive privileges, and applied for powers to form a joint-stock company to light part of London and Westminster with gas. Winsor claimed for his method of gas manufacture that it was more efficacious and profitable than any then known or practised. The profits, indeed, were to be prodigious. Winsor made an elaborate calculation in his pamphlet entitled 'The New Patriotic Imperial and National Light and Heat Company,' from which it appeared that the net annual profits "agreeable to the official experiments" would amount to over two hundred and twenty-nine millions of pounds!--and that, giving over nine-tenths of that sum towards the redemption of the National Debt, there would still remain a total profit of 570L. to be paid to the subscribers for every 5L. of deposit! Winsor took out a patent for the invention, and the company, of which he was a member, proceeded to Parliament for an Act. Boulton and Watt petitioned against the Bill, and James Watt, junior, gave evidence on the subject. Henry Brougham, who was the counsel for the petitioners, made great fun of Winsor's absurd speculations,[10] and the Bill was thrown out. In the following year the London and Westminster Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company succeeded in obtaining their Act. They were not very successful at first. Many prejudices existed against the employment of the new light. It was popularly supposed that the gas was carried along the pipes on fire, and that the pipes must necessarily be intensely hot. When it was proposed to light the House of Commons with gas, the architect insisted on the pipes being placed several inches from the walls, for fear of fire; and, after the pipes had been fixed, the members might be seen applying their gloved hands to them to ascertain their temperature, and afterwards expressing the greatest surprise on finding that they were as cool as the adjoining walls.