esults of experiments
which he had been making with the products arising from the distillation
of coal. In his process he permitted the gas to ascend through curved
tubes, and he particularly noted "its great inflammability as well as
elasticity." He also observed that "it retained the former property
after it had passed through a great quantity of water." His published
account dealt with a variety of facts and computations pertaining to the
quantities of coke, tar, etc., produced from different kinds of coal and
was a scientific work of value, but apparently the usefulness of the
property of inflammability of coal-gas did not occur to him.

It is usually the habit of the scientific explorer of nature to return
from excursions into her unfrequented recesses with new knowledge, to
place it upon exhibition, and to return for more. The inventor passes by
and sees applications for some of these scientific trophies which are
productive of momentous consequences to mankind. Sir Humphrey Davy
described his primitive arc-lamp three quarters of a century before
Brush developed an arc-lamp for practical purposes. Maxwell and Hertz
respectively predicted and produced electromagnetic waves long before
Marconi applied this knowledge and developed "wireless" telegraphy. In a
similar manner scientific accounts of the production and properties of
coal-gas antedated by many years the initial applications made by
Murdock to illuminating purposes.

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the civilized world had
only a faint glimpse of the illuminating property of gas, but
practicable gas-lighting was destined soon to be an epochal event in the
progress of lighting. The dawn of modern science was coincident with the
dawn of a luminous era.

At Soho foundry in 1798 Murdock constructed an apparatus which enabled
him to exhibit his lighting-plan on a larger scale and to experiment on
purifying and burning the gas so as to eliminate odor and smoke. Soho
was an unique institution described as a place

to which men of genius were invited and resorted from every
civilized country, to exercise and to display their talents.
The perfection of the manufacturing arts was the great and
constant aim of its liberal and enlightened proprietors,
Messrs. Boulton and Watt; and whoever resided there was
surrounded by a circle of scientific, ingenious, and skilful
men, at all times ready to carry into effect the inv