entions of
each other.

The Treaty of Amiens, which gave to England the peace she was sorely in
need of, afforded Murdock an opportunity in 1802 favorable for making a
public display of gas-lighting. The illumination of the Soho works on
this occasion is described as "one of extraordinary splendour." The
fronts of the extensive range of buildings were ornamented with a large
number of devices which displayed the variety of forms of gas-lights. At
that time this was a luminous spectacle of great novelty and the
populace came from far and wide "to gaze at, and to admire, this
wonderful display of the combined effects of science and art."

Naturally, Murdock had many difficulties to overcome in these early
days, but he possessed skill and perseverance. His first retorts for
distilling coal were similar to the common glass retort of the chemist.
Next he tried cast-iron cylinders placed perpendicularly in a common
furnace, and in each were put about fifteen pounds of coal. In 1804 he
constructed them with doors at each end, for feeding coal and
extracting coke respectively, but these were found inconvenient. In his
first lighting installation in the factory of Phillips and Lee in 1805
he used a large retort of the form of a bucket with a cover on it.
Inside he installed a loose cage of grating to hold the coal. When
carbonization was complete the coke could be removed as a whole by
extracting this cage. This retort had a capacity of fifteen hundred
pounds of coal. He labored with mechanical details, varied the size and
shape of the retorts, and experimented with different temperatures, with
the result that he laid a solid foundation for coal-gas lighting. For
his achievements he is entitled to an honorable place among the
torch-bearers of civilization.

The epochal feature of the development of gas-lighting is that here was
a possibility for the first time of providing lighting as a public
utility. In the early years of the nineteenth century the foundation was
laid for the great public-utility organizations of the present time.
Furthermore, gas-lighting was an improvement over candles and oil-lamps
from the standpoints of convenience, safety, and cost. The latter points
are emphasized by Murdock in his paper presented before the Royal
Society in 1808, in which he describes the first industrial installation
of gas-lighting. He used two types of burners, the Argand and the
cockspur. The former resembled the Argand lam