Gas lighting and public gas street lighting
Lámpara de gas y alumbrado público de gas
- Date
- 1792-1807 · confidence high
- Place
- Redruth, Cornwall (Murdoch, 1792); London, Pall Mall (Winsor, 1807), United Kingdom
- Credited to
- William Murdoch (coal-gas lighting, 1792); Frederick Winsor (public lighting, 1807); Gas Light and Coke Company (1812)
- People
- 👤 Frederick Albert Winsor1763–1830👤 William Murdoch1754–1839
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Lighting with gas obtained from the distillation of coal, first at Murdoch's house in Redruth and at the Boulton & Watt works, and from 1807 in Pall Mall, London, as the first public street lighting. It extended the working day and nightlife.
Philippe Lebon demonstrated the 'thermolamp' in Paris in 1801; Murdoch was the first to use coal gas for lighting (1792), and Winsor the first to run a public service (1807).
What it led to
- Night shifts in factories and 14-hour working days
- Urban nightlife, lit theatres and shops
- The first public utility networks (gasholders, pipes) and gas companies
- By-products: tar, coke, ammonia and aniline chemistry
Built on
- Distillation of coal (Clayton, 1735; Lebon, 1799)
- Boulton & Watt steam engine
Made possible
- Isolation of benzene1825
- Gas cooker1826
- Barsanti-Matteucci free-piston engine1853-1854
- Bunsen burner1855
- Lenoir gas engine1860
- Four-stroke internal combustion engine1876
- Gas mantle1885
- Anilines and synthetic dyes (from coal tar)
- Lenoir's gas engine (1860)
- Auer's incandescent mantle (1885)