The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-11-25

 ADVANCED BY
 'sI.'ILD SPIRIT

Chicago, Nov. 25.-CAP.)-T'he dis cUEery and utilization Of gas marked tho most important step in the pro gres7 of modern illumination accord ing to the Illinois Committee on Pub lie Utility.
 Although gas was discovered about the middle of the seventeenth century 1t was not until in the later years of the eighteenth century and the be ginning of the nineteenth that man 1 learned how to make it serve a use fLl purpose, members of the commit tee stated.
 Gas was the first public utility. Later came electricity: the telephone and the electric railway. These dis cOveries have made possible, during the last century, greater progress and development than in all the thousands of years of civilization that preceded
 Mans eternal search for riches and the futile euGeaECT5 of alchem3sts to chl1ge the baser metals into gold led Co the acCidl lntaI discovery of artit1- Cial gas. Although alchemy was fruitIess effort, it kept alive a spirit of inquiry regarding the metals that later led to many important discover les.
 John Baptist van Belmont of Brus- seIs studied and practiced medicine and later turned to chemistry and re- search work in the seventeenth cen tury. Tn the course of his eNperi- anents with fuels in 1909 he discover
  ed "a wild spirit He found that this spirit coHId be produced by means of combustion, fermentation and the action of acids on limestone.
 So phantcm-Eke and elusive was van Helr1Onts discovery that he nam ed it after 'ge-st.'' the old German word for spirit. It was nearly 200 years after van Helmont's discovery that practical steps were taken to har- ness this elusive spirit.
 Natural gas was found several years later in England, one Of the first de scrirtiOus of this being that of TICm- as Shirley in which he mentions that his attention was directed t0 what was considered to be a spring 'where he water did burn like Oyle' and did boyle and heave like water in poi On invesgieatton he found this to "arise from a. strong breath as it were a wind which ignited on the 2n- proach of a lighted candle" and did burn bright and EigCrOus.'
 pr John Clayton a Yorkshire min i~ter with a p~eIIectiO1 for the sciences. robbed the spirit of some of it's elusive qualities by eEpsrin19nTS "srellv coal" in a closed vessel he found that ''su=r.t' which issued out caught fire at the fame of a Candl le' the gas in hladders and pricIling holes iu them with a pin, then lighting the gas with Q candle
 William NTurdCcS, in 1T92, by dis
  ductiu- the gas through 70 feet of timed and Coppered tubes. succeeded in EEhting his home at RedruJh in Cornwall. Later he built an appar- aus on a larger scale and lighted the factory of James Watt, developer of the steam engine, for whom he was construction and erection engineer
 NurdOck was regarded as queer young man. He was addicted to wearing wooden hats. and also made lantern by fixing a tube in the neck Of Q gos-fIIed bladder The sight of him wauteriuE about the streets at rfght with this strange beacon filed the ueizhborhood with dismay. and some Of the good people suspected him of being in league with Lucifer and a person 10 be avoided.
 On May IS 1894. Frederick Albert VVtnsor. q German. obtained the first English patenc for gas-naking Dur- ooses The first public street light ing with gas took place in Pal Nal London January 2S, 1897. In April, 1872 Parliament granted q charter to ais company. The London and West minister Gas, LiEht &- Coke Co., and thus the first Eas company in the world came in-O being.