I paused the 1938 version of "Pygmalion" because impoverished Eiza Doolittle entered her hovel and lighted a gas light. The industrialized world was not powered by oil in the 19th century. Warships used coal to heat their boilers. While the United States had the beginnings of an oil industry, that's all it was, a beginning. Middle Eastern oil fields were not yet in operation. I don't know whether that oil and that of Iran was discovered.

So from where did Europe get its continuous source(s) of gas? The only source I can identify as a possibility is coal. But I am unfamiliar with the technology of rendering gas from coal, then circulating it throughout a large city. And conversion of coal to oil did not occur until the 1930s, I believe, in either South Africa or Germany, Although both countries developed conversion industries, I cannot fathom its relevance for 19th- and early 20th-century gas sources for European cities.

So from where did Europe get its continuous source(s) of gas?

Come to think of it, that is a darned good question.

The gas used, prior to North Sea gas field developments, was known as "Town Gas". It was created in gas plants by heating coal in a chemical process. BTW, in coal mining, coal beds are / were de-gassed by venting via boreholes. This later gave rise to the coal bed methane industry.

I don't know what was the most prevelant in Europe or Africa but I know that on our farm here in Kansas we had Calcium Carbide lamps in the house and a large storage tank buried just off the back corner of the house that held the calcium carbide and collected the gas before piping it into the individual rooms of the house. I still have a few of the crystal globes and wall mounts.

quote:

Calcium carbide is used in carbide lamps. Water dripping on carbide produces acetylene gas, which burns and produces light. While these lamps gave steadier and brighter light than candles, they were dangerous in coal mines, where flammable methane gas made them a serious hazard.

That gas made from coal (I live in brown coal mining area) was used for cooking up to 90's here. Changed to natural gas.

But it is possible that in some places, they used acetylene made from calcium carbide.

Jiri

quote:

Originally posted by CowboyCS:
I don't know what was the most prevelant in Europe or Africa but I know that on our farm here in Kansas we had Calcium Carbide lamps in the house and a large storage tank buried just off the back corner of the house that held the calcium carbide and collected the gas before piping it into the individual rooms of the house. I still have a few of the crystal globes and wall mounts.

quote:

Calcium carbide is used in carbide lamps. Water dripping on carbide produces acetylene gas, which burns and produces light. While these lamps gave steadier and brighter light than candles, they were dangerous in coal mines, where flammable methane gas made them a serious hazard.

Yup, still a few holding tanks in the ground on farms around here.

Well I'll be darned.
And here I used to play with a carbide cannon as a grasshopper.

Bill:

I have played a lot as a kid with carbide (had it from company used it to produce acetylene for welding/cutting).

It worked really good also for mole extermination. Just make fire above far hole and put carbide and a water to close hole, seal it, run away and wait for acetylene to reach far hole and fire :-)

Jiri

I have an old carbide light for a bicycle but havent tried it .

Jiri, that sounds like a fun way to spend the day.
Mete, I've got a carbide miner's lamp I keep meaning to fire up.

We used to use carbide headlamps at night hunting coons. Strap a lit bomb on your head and go!

When you didn't have water for the pellets you could pee in the canister and it would work, but man it stunk!

Jiri's thing sounds like fun!


.

Here is something more sophisticated :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDEira01c0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpaOc6IUA_o

Where I grew up in Joliet, my Great Grandfather was a contractor and built the house directly across the street from my parents' house. There was an underground concrete structure of about 6' x 8' x 6' deep, complete with manhole cover cast with the word "gas" where the acetylene was generated and piped into the house. According to my Dad, every room had one or more gas lamps. This was in contrast to most farm houses that still had kerosene lamps. Great Grandpa was pretty well off, so he had some pretty "fancy" stuff installed.

I don't know the exact date but there was correspondence from the soldiers in the Crimian campaign (1854-56) that spoke of the new gas works in London.

Well dammit, there went an hour or so...

Here is a pretty extensive wikipedia article on the subject, and it is a little too extensive to just paste a paragraph or two:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._of_manufactured_gas

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Well I'll be darned.
And here I used to play with a carbide cannon as a grasshopper.

I still have mine.....

Heating coal with water produces methane. That's where most towns got their gas from. There are still some gas works around the world, most non functioning. The last big use of the technology was in Britain during WWII. Cars were converted to gas powered (as opposed to gasoline powered) by adding a coal-fired burner with a sealed chamber above it with a mix of coal and water. As it was heated, it generated gas, typically stored in a gas bag, which was then piped into the engine. Very inefficient, but desperate times.

It really wasn't until the 1960s that natural gas became profitable to sell, and that was due to the vast pipeline networks being completed. In the Permian Basin in West Texas, there weren't streetlights until the late 50s, because they would flare off the gas from oil wells, and there was so much light from that, cars didn't use headlights. Literally billions of dollars in gas was flared off because there wasn't the infrastructure to transport it. We were a coal society until fairly recently, coal was easier to transport before the pipeline network was completed. There were places that used natural gas of course, but nothing like what we think of it today with a worldwide market, and liquification and specialized tankers and pipelines running thousands of miles.

Then again, we were still using steam trains until well after Elvis entered the army.

My home was built in 1920. It did not originally have electricity. There are still gas pipes in all the ceilings for the gas lights.

My grandmother told the story of how one of the bedrooms in her home caught fire from the acetylene lamp. The fire was put out. But, that was the last straw for her father to finally put in electricity. That was in rural IL.

Tom

Coal gas, not familiar with the technology, but I remember seeing the gas works when I was a kid in Germany. Metal frame work around a collapsible balloon like structure, as I recall, that's what supplied the pressure. When they talk about suicide by putting your head in the oven, that's what they refer to.

Grizz

You get, as has been said, "town gas" which both smells and is poisonous.

Raw coal is taken and heated in a closed oven known as a retort. The coal is not allowed to catch light...so it's not burned but heated.

The gas coming off is "town gas" which is flammable. It was stored in gas holders that were like a big tin can that rose and fell into a well of water as the gas was put in to it for storage.

What was left from when the coal had been heated wasn't waste but also useable. Coke. Which is coal but with the gas removed.

This coke can then be burned in an open hearth, like coal, to produce heat for heating boilers.

The house I grew up in (in new jersey) was originally built by my great grandfather (C 1890) and the house was plumbed for gas lighting...

My father bought the house from his Aunt in 1965 and doing some electrical wiring in the early '70s discovered a live gas pipe in the electrical box for a ceiling lamp fixture...
it was only "Sealed" with a piece of dried up putty....


After that discovery he actually started checking things and the "decorative" swiveling lamp fixtures in all the rooms of the house, had live gas feeds... and spewed fas if the valves were opened... there was a great panic to open all the doors and windows as the lines were traced to their source, and the main feed to all of them cut and capped.....

So when around 1980 he bought the house next door, nobody was even slightly surprised when I walked in opened a valve on a fixture in the dining room and lit the lamp with my zippo.

The new owner was a schoolmate from town and like me a former boy scout so it didn't take much discussion to explain how the system worked or the dangers of it.... Simply showing him where the lamp fixture spare parts were, where to order more mantles and where the Positive shut off I had installed was located... Before selling it and moving away I

Wall mounted gas lamps are safer than candles or kerosene lamps during a power outage... and it is nice to not have to live in the dark...


On a historical note as a Gas lamp collector and enthusiast (as most former scouts are)
I will comment that the liquid fueled lights like Coleman and others that are powered by "white gas" (Naptha)

Naptha itself was originally called "Drip gas" as it would condense in "City gas" lines and literally drip out... eventually the Petro industry collected this stuff and sold it as a distinct product...

And as a technical note Coleman and other "Camp fuel" products differ from VM&P Naptha in one regard, Coleman fuel specifically had 4% Toluene added to increase vapor pressure and aid ignition characteristics.
But it is basically a functional equivalent of "Coal gas condensate"...



AD

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
Bill:

I have played a lot as a kid with carbide (had it from company used it to produce acetylene for welding/cutting).

It worked really good also for mole extermination. Just make fire above far hole and put carbide and a water to close hole, seal it, run away and wait for acetylene to reach far hole and fire :-)

Jiri

Oh, WOW, I GOTTA try this on woodchucks!

If you want to be a real "earth muffin ", the green way is to capture lightning bugs ,put them in a jar and you'll have a fine lantern .
We did that long before the "Green Revolution "!

There are a number of the old "gas works" around which are now museums - each small town had its own gas works.

....... rather distressingly, when I was at college (1970s) I can still remember gas street lighting in Dundee..... Things to tell your grand kids...

Reading the other day Elizabeth Longford's book "The Years of the Sword" concerning Duke Wellington's history,etc.concerning the peninsular campaign. There was a reference about the gas lighting in London at the time.So that would have put it before 1814. My previous comment about the statements made from the Crimean war (1854) would in all likelyhood be concerning themselves about the poorer parts of town.Makes sense.

Here in Bristol, Tennessee there was a coal gas plant downtown where now stands a large electric power substation and parking lot for City Hall. It's said that the earth there is deeply saturated with coal oil and tar, and would be an EPA Superfund site if it weren't municipal property.

quote:

Originally posted by enfieldspares:
You get, as has been said, "town gas" which both smells and is poisonous.

Raw coal is taken and heated in a closed oven known as a retort. The coal is not allowed to catch light...so it's not burned but heated.

The gas coming off is "town gas" which is flammable. It was stored in gas holders that were like a big tin can that rose and fell into a well of water as the gas was put in to it for storage.

What was left from when the coal had been heated wasn't waste but also useable. Coke. Which is coal but with the gas removed.

This coke can then be burned in an open hearth, like coal, to produce heat for heating boilers.

.

And I believe coke was a principal fuel for the steel industry.

There is a tremendous "Coke Plant" in Granite City, Il. Once one of the largest steel mills in the country. They made coke, and heated the crushed iron ore there, at a separate plant.

The rock would get red hot, and the rock would let the iron melt out. They had huge piles of the stuff, and in the evening little rail cars would go up a ramped track, and dump the glowing red hot "Slag" as the cars contents were dumped about 100 feet.

It was sold to a company in St Louis who crushed it and used it to make concrete and asphalt.

We thought it a wonderful sight to sit in my Father's car after dark and watch the sparks fly as it fell to the ground. The things that entrance you at 5 or 6!

Along these same lines,a few years ago when steel prices went through the roof ( I should know,that is my business),it seems that as China was opening up 11 smelter mills + buying up all of our scrap steel they also had a really nasty business going on with some folks in this country who were giving them 1st rights on all the coal,coke,+ sulpher futures from this country;+ this is before Bethlehem or U.S. Steel could buy.For those that don't know these products are neccassary for the galvinazation process;the bulk of our metal use in America.This is not conspiracy theory,this is what happened + believe me it impacted my business quite some.When one has jobs bid 3 months down the road + overnight the material cost triples.....well you had better have deep pockets.I don't but I weathered the storm. I'm good at eating off of a 20 lb. sack of potatoes every night after night after night.

Globalism at its' worst. The Japanese bought Granite City Steel (Granite City, IL), which employed 3500 men at the time, and have shuttered it, other than a skeleton crew. The coke plant sits idle.