In 1767, Dr. Watson (afterwards Bishop of
Llandaff) ascertained that gas retained its
inflammability and elasticity whatever quantity of
water it had passed through. Van Helmont
lived in the reign, of Charles the First. It was
not till 1792 (George the Third) that the new
discovery was turned to the benefit of mankind
and the promotion of civilisation. Hitherto it
had been a mere firework to amuse philosophical
societies and puzzle coal-miners. In 1792,
the new spirit set to work, and began his long
task in earnest. Cornwall has always been
famous for the ingenious and practical minds
that sprang from its soil. It was in Cornwall that
that extraordinary man, Trevethick, first drove a
steam-carriage along a public road. It was in
Cornwall that gas was first used for lighting
houses. In 1792, Mr. Murdoch, a metal-founder
at Redruth, turned the inflammable air to
account, to save oil and candles. He distilled
gas from various substances, and lighted his
own house, offices, and street. He used to
carry bladders of it to use at night in his little
steam-carriage, and was very near being
suspected of witchcraft. In 1795, he proposed to
Mr. James Watt to take out a patent for gas as a
substitute for oil. In 1797, Watt lit up with gas
his new foundry at Old Cumnock, in Ayrshire;
and in 1798 he renewed his experiment on a
more ambitious scale at the Soho Foundry, near
Birmingham. He also contrived the best modes
of preventing the smell or the smoke of gas
being offensive.

The Peace of Amiens, and the subsequent
rejoicings in 1802, gave the enterprising
discoverer opportunities of printing his thoughts
on the minds of Birmingham people. On that
occasion he illuminated the whole front of his
works with various devices, and the Birmingham
mob came in thousands to gaze, to wonder,
and admire.

Mr. Murdoch had had many difficulties to
overcome. But, as he united scientific
knowledge with great practical skill, his
perseverance enabled him to finally triumph.
The retorts first used by him were similar in
form to the common glass retorts employed
in chemical experiments; he next made
trial of cast-iron cylinders, containing about
fifteen pounds of coals, which he placed
perpendicularly in a common portable furnace;
but in 1802 he had recourse to the
horizontal mode of setting them. In 1804 and
1805 he varied his plans, and constructed
his retorts with an aperture or door at
each end, one of them for introducing the coal,
and the other for taking out the coke; but this
method he found inconvenient and troublesome.
In the works which were constructed in 1805
and 1806, for Messrs. Phillips and Lee, at
Manchester, he tried one of a different kind, which
was very large, and had the form of a bucket
wiih a cover to it. Into this a loose grate, or
iron cage, was introduced, for holding the coal;
and by this contrivance the whole of the coke
could at once be heaved out of the retort, when
the carbonisation was completed. This was so
capacious as to contain fifteen hundred-weight
of coal, but afterwards smaller sizes in an
elliptical form were tried. These were found to
produce a greater quantity of gas, also of a
higher degree of illuminating power. Indefatigable
in the pursuit of improvement, he made a
great number of experiments in order to learn
under what circumstances not only the best gas,
but the largest quantity of it, could be obtained.

This remarkable man also used quicklime to
purify gas, and even succeeded in removing the
smell, though at the expense of the light.
He tried burners of almost every possible
shape, and at various pressures. He tested
the various sorts of coal, and the relative
economy of gas as compared with candles.
Watt, Boulton, Creighton, and all the leading
minds of Birmingham, aided Murdoch in these
useful researches.

But various shafts had been struck, and
already another passage had led to the same
discovery. In 1801, Mr. Watt, going over to
Paris, wrote back in alarm to Soho to tell them,
for Heaven's sake, if they intended to do
anything with Murdoch's light, to do it at once,
as a Frenchman, named Le Bon, had obtained
gas by distilling wood, had lit up his own house
and garden, and now proposed to light the whole
city of Paris. In 1803, while the invention still
lay almost unknown beyond the Soho foundries,
a Mr. Winsor— a German, who had Anglicised
his name from Winzer— arrived from Paris, and
publicly announced himself as the discoverer
and inventor of gas-lighting. He was an
ignorant boastful man, but confident,
industrious, and persevering. It was supposed he
had been one of Le Bon's assistants, and having
stolen the Promethean secret, had taken French
leave of his patron,

He knew little of chemistry, and was so
ignorant of mechanics that he could scarcely
conduct the erection of his own apparatus.
With a noisy charlatanism that annoyed people
of sense, this German asserted the grandeur of
his discovery, its immense usefulness, and its
vast pecuniary value. The adventurer at once
obtained a hold over the mind of a retired coach-
maker, named Kenzie, who lived in Green-
street, near Hyde Park, and this patron lent this
Donsterswivel his premises for gas-works. The
extraordinary advantages of the new light could
not be concealed or denied, and in May, 1804,
Mr. Winsor obtained a patent by the influence
of his friends. In 1803 and 1804, he first
exhibited his plan of illumination at the Lyceum
Theatre, then a great resort for lecturers and
painters of panoramas. He showed the manner
of making the gas, and conveying it round and
up and down a house; he also explained how
the form of the flame could be modified by the
shape of the burner—that its intense flame
would not be extinguished by strong and sudden
gusts of wind, and that it would neither
produce smoke, nor scatter dangerous sparks.
The most sceptical could not deny the existence
of the light, or its brilliancy; but the pretensions
of the lecturer offended and irritated many