Читать книгу Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas. For the Lighting of Streets Houses, and Public Buildings онлайн

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When the art was yet in its infancy, I published a Treatise, containing a description of the apparatus and machinery best calculated for illuminating streets, houses, and public buildings, by means of coal gas, with remarks on the utility, safety, and general nature of this new branch of domestic economy, as far as then understood, and practised in the metropolis.

The universal avidity for information on the subject, more perhaps than any particular merit in the work itself, produced a demand in this country for four large impressions of this work, in the course of a few years, and I have also had the satisfaction of finding that the Treatise has been translated into the French, German, and Italian languages.

Since this work was written, however, the art of manufacturing and applying coal gas, has undergone so many material improvements, all combining to bring it to a degree of simplicity, precision, and economy, far surpassing every thing which the original mode of practice exhibited, that I have felt I should be guilty of an injustice to the constant demand which still exists for my former Treatise, had I not made it my duty to publish the work I now present to the reader; superseding altogether the former publication, but superseding it from circumstances of necessity, and with a view to good, which I trust will be found not illusory.