Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/692

 and consumption, the high and easily regulated temperature it affords beyond all other fuel, and the relatively small volume of products of combustion evolved—being, in short, the most concentrated form of gaseous fuel hitherto available for such purposes. To which he might have added (if he had not been at the moment confining his comparisons to gases) that its freedom from the impurities rife in mineral coals, and that greatly restrict the supply of iron fit for refining, seems alone sufficient to insure its substitution for all other fuel in the manufacture of iron and steel.

That Sweden has been first to move in this direction was natural, from peculiar circumstances. This preëminence of "Swedes iron" has been sustained under a singular disadvantage as to fuel. The country is destitute of coal, and pays a monstrous tax on that grand factor of its leading industry in the expense of importing it from England. On the other hand, it possesses inexhaustible stores of peat, which is well adapted to the manufacture of water-gas by the American process, and will henceforward supply the Swedes with that perfected form of fuel at a cost that will seem to them as nothing.

The operations now going on in Stockholm under the superintendence of Mr. Dwight were initiated by a semi-official body styled the Jernkontoret (or Metallurgical Association), which, under the patronage of the Government, pursues whatever investigations and experiments promise advantage to the grand interest of that country. Its voluminous published researches and reports are of standard authority in metallurgy all over the world. Water-gas making was commenced with American apparatus erected in the Atlas Works, Stockholm, in 1879, and the product applied to the treatment of iron ores and the manufacture of steel. An official certificate of unqualified strength has been published under the signatures of leading Swedish and Russian metallurgists, and new works on a practical scale are now being established. The subject excited extraordinary interest throughout the intelligent classes of the nation. Preparations were also made to conduct the gas into various establishments and mansions for the purposes of warming and cooking. Orders have reached New York for fuel-gas works of the same kind in St. Petersburg, Russia, and preparations were making at the latest advices for similar movements in Austria and Bohemia, as well as to press forward organizations for the supply of American cities with both domestic fuel and manufacturing power in this form. The introduction of a ubiquitous motor (for the Otto silent gas-engine) as handy, cheap, and common as the ordinary gaslight, will mark a new era in industry, and prove an important new factor in political economy.