IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MEANS OF IGNITING GAS AND IN APPARATUS EMPLOYED THEREIN
Year: 1875

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Marshall Arthur Wier at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
4th March 1875.
I, MARSHALL ARTHUR WIER, of No. 33, Abchurch Lane, in the
City of London, do hereby declare the nature of my said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MEANS OF IGNITING GAS AND IN APPARATUS EMPLOYED
THEREIN," to be as follows:-
:-
My Invention relates to the ignition of gas by a current of electricity,
and is especially applicable to the ignition of gas at the burners of the
lamps in railway carriages, street lamps, factories, houses, and other
places where large numbers of gas jets are employed.
It consists in employing for the purpose of generating the requisite
current of electricity a magneto-electric machine, which in the case of
railway carriages, factories, or other places where machinery is employed,
may be set in motion by any suitable and convenient revolving part of
such machinery, such as an axle or shaft, and in the case of houses

page_text: where machinery is not employed, by means of a winch turned by hand
or by any other suitable means for imparting rotary motion.
In order to effect the lighting of the gas by means of the magneto-
electric current generated in the machine, I lead the conducting wire
usually employed from one pole of the said magneto-electric machine to
the nearest gas burner, and thence consecutively from burner to burner
until the last is reached. The wire is then returned direct to the other
pole of the magneto-electric machine. The wire connected with the
burners is severed at each, and again united by short pieces of platinum
wire which cross the burners at a convenient distance, or the severed 1
ends of the wire may be placed nearly close together without the
platinum wire between them and near the orifice of the burner, but I
prefer to employ the platinum wire.
It will be understood that the conducting wire must be insulated from
the burners and other clectric conductors in the usual manner.
The 1
current from the magneto-electric machine either heats the platinum
wire red hot or causes a spark to pass between the severed ends of the
wire, in either caso igniting the gas when required.
The light is extinguished by turning off the gas by means of a main-
cock regulating the supply to the entire series of burners. This 2
arrangement is applicable to railway carriages, street lamps, and other
circumstances where it is required to or will not be inconvenient to light
or extinguish all the burners simultaneously, and in which the gas may
be turned on to the burners from a main cock without danger.
In the case of factories, houses, and other circumstances in which it 2
would be unsafe to regulate the supply of gas by a main cock only, or
where it is not required to light all the burners at once, I employ
connections for the sovered ends of the conducting wire, so connected
with the ordinary regulating cocks of the burners that on opening the
latter the said severed ends or connections attached thereto are separated 3
or break contact, allowing a spark to pass between them to ignite the
gas, whilst when the said regulating cocks are shut or turned into
certain positions after the lighting is effected the said severed ends or
connections attached to them remain in contact and the electric current
passes through them without producing a spark.
3

page_text: In employing the apparatus last above described, I do not confine
myself to the use of the magneto-electric machine alone as a source of
clectric power, as any other suitable source may be employed, as, for
example, an electro-magnetic machine, the charge of a Leyden jar, and
so forth.