page_title: History of manufactured fuel gases
section_title: Manufactured gas in England
hierarchical_section_title: History of manufactured fuel gases / Manufactured gas 1812–1825 / Manufactured gas in England
caption_attribution_description: Gas plant as described by Frederick Accum
context_page_description: The history of gaseous fuel, important for lighting, heating, and cooking purposes throughout most of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, began with the development of analytical and pneumatic chemistry in the 18th century. The manufacturing process for "synthetic fuel gases" typically consisted of the gasification of combustible materials, usually coal, but also wood and oil. The coal was gasified by heating the coal in enclosed ovens with an oxygen-poor atmosphere. The fuel gases generated were mixtures of many chemical substances, including hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide and ethylene, and could be burnt for heating and lighting purposes. Coal gas, for example, also contains significant quantities of unwanted sulfur and ammonia compounds, as well as heavy hydrocarbons, and so the manufactured fuel gases needed to be purified before they could be used.
  The first attempts to manufacture fuel gas in a commercial way were made in the period 1795–1805 in France by Philippe LeBon, and in England by William Murdoch. Although precursors can be found, it was these two engineers who elaborated the technology with commercial applications in mind.
context_section_description: From 1812 to approximately 1825, manufactured gas was predominantly an English technology. A number of new gas utilities were founded to serve London and other cities in the UK after 1812. Liverpool, Exeter, and Preston were the first in 1816. Others soon followed; by 1821, no town with population over 50,000 was without gaslight. Five years later, there were only two towns over 10,000 that were without gaslight.
  In London, the growth of gaslight was rapid. New companies were founded within a few years of the Gas Light and Coke Company, and a period of intense competition followed as companies competed for consumers on the boundaries of their respective zones of operations. Frederick Accum, in the various editions of his book on gaslight, gives a good sense of how rapidly the technology spread in the capital. In 1815, he wrote that there were 4000 lamps in the city, served by 26 miles (42 km) of mains. In 1819, he raised his estimate to 51,000 lamps and 288 miles (463 km) of mains. Likewise, there were only two gasworks in London in 1814, and by 1822, there were seven and by 1829, there were 200 companies. The government did not regulate the industry as a whole until 1816, when an act of Parliament created and a post of inspector for gasworks, the first holder of which was Sir William Congreve. Even then, no laws were passed regulating the entire industry until 1847, although a bill was proposed in 1822, which failed due to opposition from gas companies. The charters approved by Parliament did, however, contain various regulations such as how the companies could break up the pavement, etc.
caption: A coloured plate of a gas plant from Frederick Accum's A Practical Treatise on Gas-light (1815)
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