It is usually the habit of the scientific explorer of nature to return from excursions into her unfrequented recesses with new knowledge, to place it upon exhibition, and to return for more.  The inventor passes by and sees applications for some of these scientific trophies which are productive of momentous consequences to mankind.  Sir Humphrey Davy described his primitive arc-lamp three quarters of a century before Brush developed an arc-lamp for practical purposes.  Maxwell and Hertz respectively predicted and produced electromagnetic waves long before Marconi applied this knowledge and developed “wireless” telegraphy.  In a similar manner scientific accounts of the production and properties of coal-gas antedated by many years the initial applications made by Murdock to illuminating purposes.

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the civilized world had only a faint glimpse of the illuminating property of gas, but practicable gas-lighting was destined soon to be an epochal event in the progress of lighting.  The dawn of modern science was coincident with the dawn of a luminous era.

At Soho foundry in 1798 Murdock constructed an apparatus which enabled him to exhibit his lighting-plan on a larger scale and to experiment on purifying and burning the gas so as to eliminate odor and smoke.  Soho was an unique institution described as a place

to which men of genius were invited and resorted from every civilized country, to exercise and to display their talents.  The perfection of the manufacturing arts was the great and constant aim of its liberal and enlightened proprietors, Messrs. Boulton and Watt; and whoever resided there was surrounded by a circle of scientific, ingenious, and skilful men, at all times ready to carry into effect the inventions of each other.

The Treaty of Amiens, which gave to England the peace she was sorely in need of, afforded Murdock an opportunity in 1802 favorable for making a public display of gas-lighting.  The illumination of the Soho works on this occasion is described as “one of extraordinary splendour.”  The fronts of the extensive range of buildings were ornamented with a large number of devices which displayed the variety of forms of gas-lights.  At that time this was a luminous spectacle of great novelty and the populace came from far and wide “to gaze at, and to admire, this wonderful display of the combined effects of science and art.”

Naturally, Murdock had many difficulties to overcome in these early days, but he possessed skill and perseverance.  His first retorts for distilling coal were similar to the common glass retort of the chemist.  Next he tried cast-iron cylinders placed perpendicularly in a common furnace, and in each were put about fifteen pounds of coal.  In 1804 he constructed them with doors at each end, for feeding coal and extracting coke respectively, but these were found inconvenient.  In his first lighting installation in the factory