w to the establishment of a library, classes,
and lectures, urging as a sufficient plea for not joining it, that they
could not read, and that books would be of no use to them. At last Mr.
Neilson succeeded, though with considerable difficulty, in inducing
fourteen of the workmen to adopt his plan. Each member was to
contribute a small sum monthly, to be laid out in books, the Gas
Company providing the members with a comfortable room in which they
might meet to read and converse in the evenings instead of going to the
alehouse. The members were afterwards allowed to take the books home
to read, and the room was used for the purpose of conversation on the
subjects of the books read by them, and occasionally for lectures
delivered by the members themselves on geography, arithmetic,
chemistry, and mechanics. Their numbers increased so that the room in
which they met became insufficient for their accommodation, when the
Gas Company provided them with a new and larger place of meeting,
together with a laboratory and workshop. In the former they studied
practical chemistry, and in the latter they studied practical
mechanics, making for themselves an air pump and an electrifying
machine, as well as preparing the various models used in the course of
the lectures. The effects on the workmen were eminently beneficial,
and the institution came to be cited as among the most valuable of its
kind in the kingdom.[1]

Mr. Neilson throughout watched carefully over its working, and exerted
himself in all ways to promote its usefulness, in which he had the
zealous co-operation of the leading workmen themselves, and the
gratitude of all. On the opening of the new and enlarged rooms in
1825, we find him delivering an admirable address, which was thought
worthy of republication, together with the reply of George Sutherland,
one of the workmen, in which Mr. Neilson's exertions as its founder and
chief supporter were gratefully and forcibly expressed.[2]

It was during the period of his connection with the Glasgow Gas-works
that Mr. Neilson directed his attention to the smelting of iron. His
views in regard to the subject were at first somewhat crude, as appears
from a paper read by him before the Glasgow Philosophical Society early
in 1825. It appears that in the course of the preceding year his
attention had been called to the subject by an iron-maker, who asked
him if he thought it possible to purify the air blown into the blast