Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-04-29
NATURAL GAS.
Hills and Plains Lighted by Wasted Fuel
and Merchants Advertising with it.


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. If you take
the 9:15 o'clock a. m. 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 smokestack belongs.
These are coke ovens, or furnaces in
which bituminous coal is reduced to
coke, and very beautiful and surprising
things they are when seen by the hum
dred, in long lines and Indian file, on a
pitch black night and in region 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 a
great cloud of flame in the sky-a flame
as big as house, and shaped now like
a ham, and next like a huge conical
seashell. For half mile more around
1t the country 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 a
slender black pole twenty feet high. 1t
takes a moments study to bring reali-
cation that the pole is an ordinary
house-service gas pipe, and that the
swaying. rolling cloud of fire is a 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 a
good-sizcd cataract.
A great, yellowish white speck, low
down in the distant horizon ahead, is
the first sign one secs of Pittsburg That
spcck is flame forty or fifty feet long
and half as wide. It is the advertise
ment of a gentleman's furnishing goods
store on Smithiield street, the Broadway
of Pittsburg. The enterprising brothers
who keep the store had figure of
Liberty Enlightening the World" in
the corner of their great new building,
and when natural gas invaded the city
they took the cumbersome Bartholdian
imitation of firebrand out of her hand,
substituted twenty feet of gas-pipe for
it, tapped the main in the middle of the
street, and now they send man up a
ladder every night. and he lights a
match and raises it to the pipe-and,
bang, section of the city is lighted as
part of outdoors. And there over the
city this great balloon-shaped blaze
sways and pulsates in the wind all night,
roaring like a giants furnace.
Just so the river side 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
yellow and white pieces from it and
fling them away, patches of fire that
look as if they We're 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 even
when the air is laden with it. 1t leaks
from the mains in the Pitisburg streets,
and, finding Il VEN Of sand. penetrates
to the cellars of near houses. Several
times it has happened that resident
has gone down IN the cllar of his house
to look for something, has lighted a
match there. and has seemed TO become
the center of q cpafui>ion of nature that
has wreck Il al Inc windows, cracked
all 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 ga IS luIu forever. There is
at least on'i wn or city in this region
wherein he :, rcu lights are never put
out. bco.,,.- il would be- waste of
money TO hire a lampli, htcr after the
original lighting.
This new fuel is valued by manufac-
turers because of the intensity and
evenness of its heating properties. One
manufacturer said that in his opinion it
will presently double the wealth-pro-
ducing power of the industries in and
near Pittsburg by improving the quality
OF every product in the development OF
which heat plays part. For use in
dwellings and offices it seems equally
desirable. only saw il in use III one
house. There saw il ir an ordinary
cylindrical stove. A pipe emptied the
gas in at the bottom of the stove, where
it used to be customary to keep the ash
pan.
AT first, when the owner turned on
his new fuel and dropped match in al
the stove door the top lid was shot into
the ceiling, the door flew across the
room, and the hampers blew ont He
is an ingenious 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 think
ing he had returned to the old-fashioned
way of getting heat" 1t fooled me al
so, for when the gas has been lighted
in the stove for few minutes the bricks
become red-hot and looked precisely like
Goals, Pittsburg Correspondence