Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/602

 582 was never completed. The first utilization of natural gas of which we have record was at Fredonia, in New York, in 1821. This first well was an inch and a half in diameter and only twenty-seven feet deep. The gas was used solely for illumination, and when Lafayette visited the town, in 1824, the inn where he stopped was thus lighted. The Fredonia well excited an immense interest on both sides of the Atlantic, and so great a man as Humboldt is said to have declared it the eighth wonder of the world. Yet there seems to have been little effort to duplicate the wonder. Even at Fredonia a second well was not sunk until 1850. The first use of the gas for manufacturing purposes was probably in 1841, when William Tompkins burned it to evaporate brine in the Kanawha Valley. From this time onward the natural gas came slowly to be used under boilers to drill salt and petroleum wells, and occasionally to heat and light the houses in neighboring villages, but on the whole the gas was regarded as a danger and a nuisance. It was not until April, 1873, that gas was used in iron-making. In the fall of 1875 it was introduced into a large rolling mill near Pittsburg.

About this time the new fuel was also introduced into glass-houses. It is believed that the Rochester Tumbler Company, at Rochester, Pa., was the first to utilize the gas in the processes of glass-making. At the present day it seems odd that so eminently convenient and economical a fuel should have been so slow in coming into use. The Government reports on the Mineral Resources of the United States make no mention of natural gas until 1883 and 1884. In the volume for those years it appears for the first time as an economic product of sufficient importance to be noticed. Eight years have passed, and now the capital invested in natural gas is probably not far from one hundred million dollars. In the latter part of 1883 the gas began to be introduced into Pittsburg glass-houses. Mr. John B. Ford took an active interest in this development. During this and the following year he exploited the now celebrated Tarentum district in order to obtain a supply of gas for the plate-glass works which he had just built at Creighton.

The transition from solid to gaseous fuel took place with astonishing rapidity. By 1885 all the glass-houses in Pittsburg and the neighborhood which could obtain gas cheaply were using it for all purposes of melting, blowing, manufacturing, and annealing. It was possible to make the substitution so suddenly both because of the rapid exploitation and development of the gas territory, and because of the comparatively small changes needed to adapt coal-burning furnaces to the gas. Where the gas was burned for power, under boilers, the old grates were in many places retained and the gas-burners so arranged that, in case of