IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR LIGHTING GAS
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Charles Leigh Clarke and John
Leigh at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 26th February
1880.
CHARLES LEIGH CLARKE and JOHN LEIGH, both of Manchester, in the County
of Lancaster. "IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR LIGHTING GAS."
The object of this Invention is to construct a convenient, durable, and portable
form of hand lamp or apparatus for lighting gas by means of electric spark, sparks,
or platinum wire heated by the electric current.
This hand lamp or apparatus is especially adapted for use in mills, cotton or other
factories, warehouses, and other places where there is a danger of fire from the
dropping of a spark if an ordinary lamp or lighted taper be employed for lighting
the gas; it may also be used with great advantage in hotels, private dwelling houses,
and other places where it is required to light gas lights without danger from falling
sparks. To employ the electric sparks I employ, by preference, a battery cell of
special construction, to which is connected an induction coil, either with or without
a condenser. This battery is formed of an outer cell containing a zinc cylinder and
exciting fluid; inside this is placed a porous cell containing a carbon block or rod,
or other suitable material, together with the necessary fluid, both cells having
convenient compartments left to allow of the exciting fluids being separated from
The porous
the positive and negative elements of the battery when not in use.
cell has its compartment either saturated with some suitable non conducting
substance, or is enamelled or glazed in order to do away entirely with "endorsement
when the cell is out of action, and so prolong the durability of the exciting fluids.
If a condenser is used with the coil, I place it by preference round the external
surface of the outer cell to economize space, the induction coil being placed with its
adjuncts beneath it. From the terminals of the induction coil two wires are carried
to a suitable short tube and insulated, their ends being separated by a sufficient
space across which when the apparatus is working the electric spark or sparks pass;
or instead of the induction coil, I employ a fine piece of platinum wire, which is
(as is well known) rendered white hot by the passage of the electric current, such
platinum wire being stretched across the above named tube, and connected suitably
with the battery. The tubo which carries the ends of tho wires from the induction
coil (or in the other caso the platinum wire) has a guard of wiro gauze attached to
it so that the gas burner cannot be brought into contact with them and displace or

page_text: injure them. The apparatus has a suitable "commutator" provided which breaks
the circuit, excepting when pressed down by the thumb or finger, so that the whole
apparatus is out of action in its normal state. When the "commutator" is pressed
the circuit is then completed, and a spark (or sparks) will pass from the end of one
wire to the other wire, or the fine platinum wire is heated, and either may be used
for lighting the gas. The above form of battery is the form we prefer, although
we can use in this lamp any of the batteries usually employed for working induction
coils or heating the platinum wirc. The fluids we use by preference are in the
outer cell dilute sulphuric acid, and in the inner cell nitric acid. When the
apparatus.is out of use for any length of time, it is turned over or reversed so that
the fluids flow into the compartments as described above, and are thus brought
away from the zinc and carbon elements, entirely preventing the wasting of fluids,
also throwing the cell completely out of action until the apparatus is required for
use again. The whole is enclosed in a casing of any convenient material of portable
shape, the only parts necessarily projecting outside being the handle, the
commutator button, and the tube containing the terminal wires of the coil or the
platinum wire.