New Britain herald., 1922-11-24
DISCOVERY OF GAS
 STEP IN PROGRESS
Its Utilization Was Extremely lm- portant, Says Utility Committee

Chicago. Nov. 24-The discovery and utilization of gas marked the most important step in the progress of modern illumination, according to the Illinois Committee on Public Utility
 Although gas was discovered about the middle of the seventeenth ccn- tury, it was not until in the latter years of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth that man learned how to make it serve u useful purpose. members of the committee 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 it.
 Mans eternal search for riches and the futile endeavors of alchemists to change the baser metals into gold led to the accidental discovery of arti- ficial gas. Although alchemy was a fruitless effort, it kept alive a spirit of inquiry regarding the metals that later led to many important discov- cries.
 John Baptist van Belmont of Brus- sells studied and practiced medicine and later turned to chemistry and re- search 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- scrived as "a wild spirit" He found that this spirit" could be produced by means of combustion, fermentation and the action of acids on limestone.
 So phantom-like and elusive was van Helmont's discovery that he named it after "geist," the old Ger man word for spirit. It was nearly 200 years after van Helmont's discov- cry that practical steps were taken to harness this elusive spirit
 Natural gas was found several years later in England, one of the first de- scriptions 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 investigation he found this to "arise from string breath, as it were, a wind which ignited on the approach of a lighted candle" and did burn bright and vigorous"
 Dr. John Clayton, a Yorkshire min ister with a predilection for the sciences, robbed the spirits of some of it's elusive qualities by experiments between 1860 and 1870. Heating Shelly coal' in a closed vessel he found that spirit which issued out caught fire at the flame of a candle." He amused his friends by collecting the gas in bladders and prickling holes in them with a pin, then light ing the gas with a candle.
 William Murdock, in 1792, by dis tilling coal in an iron retort and con- ducting the gas through 70 feet of timed and coppered tubes, succeeded in lighting his home at Redruth in Cornwall. Later he built an appar- atus on larger scale and lighted the factory of James Watt, developer of the steam engine, for whom he was construction and erection engineer.
 Murdock 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 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 suspected him of being in league with Lucifcr and person to be avoided.
 On May IS, 1894, Frederick Albert Winsor. German, obtained the first English patent for as-making pur- poses. The first public street lighting with gas took place in Pall Mall, Lon don, January 2S, 1907. In April, 1872, Parliament granted charter to this "The London and Westmin- ster Gas, Light & Coke company" and thus the first gas company in the world came into being.
 Tho ren11tation of many Oood