Техническое чтение для энергетиков. Бухарова Г.П. - 88 стр.

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90
After two years of experimenting", he persuaded his employer, Watt, to let him
illuminate the Soho factory by gaslight. The installation was completed just in time to
celebrate the peace treaty of Amiens and the end of the Anglo-French war in 1802
with the first public exhibition of gaslighting in and around the factory.
A year later, gaslight came to London. The people of the capital saw for the
first time a street bathed in light at night. But many people were against it.
'London is now to be lit during the winter months with the same coal-smoke
that turns our winter days into nights,' complained Sir Walter Scott, and even such an
eminent man as Sir Humphry Davy exclaimed that he would never acquiesce in a
plan to turn St. Paul's into a gasometer.
But the progress of gaslighting could not be stopped; the main argument for it
was that it would increase public safety in the streets– it took much longer to
persuade the people that there was no danger to their homes if they had gas tubes laid
into them.
The introduction of gaslight in the factories had an especially far-reaching
effect – it made the general adoption of night shifts possible. The first industry to do
this was the Lancashire textile industry, for the workers at their looms were now able
to watch the threads at any time of the day or night.
Murdock's assistant was responsible for many improvements; among other
things he invented the gas meter, and put up gas lamps on Westminster Bridge in
1813. Three years later, most of London's West End was already gaslit, and by 1820
nearly all Paris. New York followed in 1823. In Germany there were many objections
to be overcome until the advantages of gaslight were recognized.
William Murdock lived long enough to witness the beginning of another
development whose importance few people recognized at the time: gas cooking. In
1839 the first gas-oven was installed at a hotel, and a dinner cooked for a hundred
guests. For a long time, however, this idea did not catch on. But when towards the
end of the century the electric light began to take over from the gas lamp, the industry
was forced to make a new effort so as not to be squeezed out of existence. In 1885 the
Austrian physicist Carl Auer introduced his incandescent gasmantle, which quickly
superseded the open (and dangerous) gas flames which had until then been in use. He
used the same principle as Edison in his electric lamp; his gas-mantle was a little
hood of tulle impregnated with thorium or cerium oxide. For a while, incandescent
gaslight gained ground,
and many people who had already installed electric cables
had them torn up again. But in the end electricity won because it was more effective
and more economical.
Only then did gas cooking emerge as a new aid to the world's housewives. It
has still its place in the kitchen; gas-operated refrigerators, gas stoves, and central-
heating systems are more recent developments. Gas has by no means outstayed its
welcome
3
in our civilization.
Auer himself was responsible for one of the decisive improvements in the
electric bulb, the great rival of his gas lamp. Using his experience with rare earths he
developed a more efficient filament than Edison's carbonized thread-osmium. It was
superseded in its turn by the tungsten "wolfram" filament, invented by two Viennes

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