Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1886-01-07
POOLING WITH NATURAL GAS.
His and Plains Lighted by
wasted Fuel and Merchants
Advertising with n.

PirTsBURG, January 4.-People fool
with natural gas and waste it here in a
manner quite picturesque, but indicating
at the same time that they either don't
know just what to do with it or have got
a great deal more than they can make
useful. II you take the 10 o'clock a.
IN. train from New York for Pittsburg on
any day you will find the darkness after
shutdown relieved by frequent plunges
alongside OF long rows of flaming things
that look like boiler furnaces, with holes
IN the top in place OF chimneys, SO that
you see the white hot fire where the doors
ought to be, and great leaping red and
white flames where the smoke-stack be-
longs. These are coke ovens, or fur
naces, in which bituminous coal is re-
duced to coke, and very beautiful and
surprising things they are when seen by
the hundred, in long lines and Indian
file, on pitch black night and in re-
gion where, in some cases, no villages or
houses or buildings OF any sort appear.
In the heart OF this luminous coke oven
country you suddenly shoot past d great
cloud OF flame in the sky-a flame as big
as house, and shaped now like ham,
and next like huge conical seashell.
For half q mile more around it the coun-
try is brilliantly lighted, and men and
fences and sheds and flying birds cast
jet black shadows on the grass. At
second glance the vast cloud OF flame is
seen to be poised on slender black pole
twenty feet high. 1t takes moments
study to bring a realization that the pole
is an ordinary house-service gas pipe, and
that the swaying, rolling cloud Of fire is
flame OF natural gas. If the cars would
stop just there for a moment you would
hear that burning gas roar and rumble
and hiss with almost exactly the noise of
good-sized cataract.
A great, yellowish white speck, low
down in the distant horizon ahead, is the
first sign one sees of Pittsburg. That
speck is flame forty or fifty feet long
and half as wide. 1t is the advertisement
of gentlemans furnishing goods store
on Smithfeld street, the Broadway of
Pittsburg. The enterprising brothers
who keep the store had a figure of Glib
erty Enlightening the World" in the
corner of their great new building, and
When natural gas invaded the city they
took the cumbersome Bartholdian imita-
ton of a firebrand out OF her hand, sub
stituted twenty feet of gas pipe for it,
tapped the main in the middle OF the
street, and now they send man up q
ladder every night, and he lights match
and raises it to the pipe-and bang! a
section Of the city is lighted as no electric
light ever began to light any part OF out
doors. And there over the city this great
balloon-shaped blaze sways and pulsates
in the wind all night, roaring like giants
furnace.
Just so the riverside is illuminated by
two great flames that jet from ordinary
little tubes sticking out of the side OF Du
Quesne Heights. 1T is wonderful to see
the wind catch one of these masses OF
flame and wrestle with it and bear it
down and roll it over and bite great yell
low and white pieces from it and fling
them away, patches OF fire that look as
If they were going to float along and keep
their shape awhile, as whiffs Of steam do
but instantly they are gone.
This natural gas carries no odor with
it. You cannot detect its presence ever
when the air is laden with it. 1t leaks
from the mains in the Pittsburg streets
and, finding vein OF sand, penetrates tc
the cellars OF near houses. Several times
it has happened that resident has gone
down in the cellar of his house to look
ioi oohiStiiluby uts uShicU IL ulitCll tlleTe.
and has seemed to become the centre OF
a convulsion of nature that has wrecked
all the windows, cracked the walls, and
blown the doors off their hinges. In
some of the mills and in the lot where
the new jail is going up the gas jets burn
forever. There is at least one town OF
city in this region wherein the street
lights are never put out, because it would
~ n Ixn q Ia pf IN a 1ot 1,f,hf aY
after the original lighting.
This new fuel is valued in manufactures
because OF the intensity and evenness OF
its heating properties. One manufacturer
said that in his opinion it will presently
double the wealth-producing power Of
the Industries in and near Pittsburg by
improving the quality OF every product in
the development of which heat plays q
part. For use in dwellings and offices il
seems equally desirable. / only saw il
in use in one house. There saw it in
an ordinary cylindrical stove. A pipe
emptied the gas in at the bottom of the
stove, where it used to he customary tC
keep the ash-pan.
At first, when the owner turned on his
new fuel and dropped match in at the
stove door, the top lid was shot into the
ceiling, the door flew across the room
and the hampers blew out. He is an in
genious person. He got lot OF bricks
broke each one in two, put the half bricks
in the stove so that they looked like big
Goals, turned on the gas, and chuckled to
see how, as he expressed it, he had
"fooled the stove into thinking he had
returned to the old-fashioned way of get
ting heat" 1t fooled me also, for wher
the gas has been lighted in the stove fol