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Attribution - This image is found on flickr and is by elfsternberg
This natural illuminating coal gas pit used to shoot a flame 12 foot high.....
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In the 1800's a French engineer and chemist named Philippe Lebon ( le Bon ) had an interest in the steam engine innovation of the era. He would go on to invent an engine that used an illuminating gas process where coal gas would be ignited by an electric spark.
The Lebon engine is not the first engine but it did go down in history has the first internal combustion engine which would become widely studied and innovated upon in the future of engines. Lebon never lived to see that progress as he was assassinated on December 1, 1804 at the young age of 37.
The illuminating gas process and the properties of coal gas were being studied and evaluated over 100 years earlier by other chemists and scientists.
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Dr. John Clayton's accidental discovery of the inflammability of coal gas....
He calls the gas "the spirit" of coal, and discovered that it was inflammable, from its having accidentally caught fire by coming in contact with a candle, as it was escaping from a fracture in one of his distillatory vessels....
....the date of the letter is not given but it must have been written many years before, because Mr Boyle died in 1691. Dr John Clayton was Dean of Kildare, in Ireland. |
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