This Day in History: 1754-08-21

Birthday of William Murdoch
The Inventor of gas light in 1792, William Murdock was the chief engineer with Boulton & Watt (as in James Watt, who invented the steam engine). Murdock first used the gas that comes from heated coal to light a small room in Redruth, Cornwall. The experiment is usually noted as the beginning of the manufactured gas industry. In France, Phileppe Lebon was aware of Murdock’s coal gas experiments and uses wood gas, not coal, to light the hotel Seignelay in Paris. Political turmoil curtails the project and then Lebon’s untimely death by robbery 1804 ends the wood gas experiment. Meanwhile in England, coal gas starts to take off as the brighter light replaces oil lamps on city streets, theaters, factories and, eventually, homes. The industry immediately starts to create fish kills and water pollution as waste coal tar is dumped in streams and rivers. In one 1834 case, charges read: “Defendants unlawfully and injuriously conveyed great quantities of filthy, noxious, unwholesome and deleterious liquids, matters, scum and refuse into the river Thames, whereby the waters became charged and impregnated with the said liquid and became corrupted and insalubrious and unfit for the use of his Majesty’s subjects … People who supported themselves and their families by catching and selling fish were deprived of their employment and reduced to great poverty and distress; (all) to the common nuisance and grievous injury of his Majesty’s subjects, to the evil example, and against the peace.”
Despite this, gas light became standard in most European and North American cities by the 1830s and were not replaced until electric lights became standard in the 1880s and 90s. The environmental legacy of manufactured coal gas plants (today called MGPs) is only beginning to be understood, with many lawsuits continuting over legacy pollution.