The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-11-19
GAS CALLED WILD
 SPIRIT" ON BEING
 FIRST DISCOVERED
Use of Gas First Gave Impetus to Modern Illumination. Found Accidentally by
 AIChemiStS
By Associated Press

An1CaRO, 4NoNtHloCi tSf AhN '1 covery and utilization of gas marked the most important step in the progress of modern illumination, ac- cording to the Illinois committee tn public utility.
 Although gas was discovered about the middle of the seventeenth cen tury, it was not until in the later years of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth that man learned how to, make it serve d useful purpose. members of the cem mittee stated.
 Gas was theJ first public untility. Later came electricity the telephone and the electric railway. These dis coyeries have made possible. during the last century, greater progress and development than in all the thou sands of years of civilization that preceded 1t.
 Mans eternal search for riches and the futile endeavors of alchemists to change the baser metals inte gold led to many important discoveries.
 Found "WiId spirit-
 John Baptist van Belmont of Brus-  and later turned to chemistry and research work in the seventeenth cen- tury. In the course of his experi- ments with fuels in 1909 he discoy- cred that they yielded what he de- scribed as "a wild spirit" He found that this spirit" could be produced by means ef combustion, fermenta- tion and the action of acids on lime stone.
 So phantom and elusive was van Helmont's discovery that nc named it after 'geist." the old Ger man word for spirit. It was nearly 200 years after van Helmont's dis covery that practical steps were taken to harness this elusive spirit.
 Natural gas was found several years later in England, one of the first descriptions of this being that of Thomas Shirley in which he mem tions that his attention was directed to what was considered to be a "spring where the water did burn like pyle" and did boyle and heave like water in pot On investiga tion he found this tC "arise from strong breath, as 1t were. wind which ignited on the approach of a lighted candle" and "did burn bright and vigorous"
 Minister Experiments
 Dr. John Clayton. Yorkshire minister with predilection for the sciences, robbed the spirit of some of it's elusive qualities by experiments between 1860 and 1870. Heating shelly coar' in a closed vessel he found that spirit" which issued out caught fire at the flame of a can dle." He amused his friends by col lecting the gas in bladders and prick n ba n xyft h in lighting the gas with a candle.
 William Murdock, in 1792, by dis filling coal in an iron retort and con ducting the gas through 70 feet of timed and coppered tubes, succeeded in lighting his home at Reduth in Cornwall. Later he built an ap- paratus on a larger scale and lighted the factory of James Watt developer of the steam engine. for whom he was construction and erection engi- neer.
 Murdock was regarded as a queer young man. He was addicted to' wear ing wooden hats, and also made A lantern by fixing a tube in the neck of a gas-filled bladder. The sight of him wandering about the streets at night with this strange beacon filled the neighborhood with dismay. and some of the good people sus pected him of being in league with Lucifer and a person to be avoided.
 On May IS. 1904, Frederick Albert Winsor, German, obtained the first English patent for making pur- poses. The first public street lighting with gas took place in Pail Mall, Londtn. January 2S, 1907. In April. 1912, Parliament granted a charter to this company, the London and Westminster Gas. Light and Coke company" and thus the first gas company in the world came into being.