Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — NATURAL CAAS. [ARTICLE]

NATURAL CAAS.

A Brief HUtory of tlie Rl« » ,ul F»U of This Furl. The hist&V of the rise of natural *as for manufacturing purposes In Pittsburg interesting one, says the Cnronicle-Telegraph of that city. It was about the middle of May, 1884, whea it displaced coal in the first iron mill in this city. The first qf that month it was used for the first time in an extensive industrial works, in the O'Hara glass house at Thirtieth street and the Allegheny Valley Railroad. About the fifteenth of the month it took the place of 6,000 bushels of coal in the Carnegie mill at Twenty-ninth street. Not until early in November was It introduced in the mill of this firm at Thirty-third street, where It took the place of 7,000 bushels of coal daily. While the use of natural gas was very satisfactory, the slowness attending its introduction was rettiarkable. It was about the middle of the sumniW fit 1885 before it was used in half of the iron and steel works in the Pittsburg district, and it was fully three years before it took the place of coal in all of them.

There was considerable trouble in securing manufacturers to make the change. The low rate offered to the firms was not so much of an object as the room saved by absence of ashes. There was no trouble in reconstructing the furnaces from coal to the use of natural gas, yet this retarded its early use somewhat. Among the first along the Monongahela River to adopt it was Jones & Laughlins, in the winter of 1884, in the American Iron Works. To guard themselves against possible trouble they only remodeled a portion of their works. About six months after it was used with satisfaction in these works it wds used in all the mills along this river and the Ohio, excepting in those of the Oliver Iron Company.

Beginning with 1889, the gradual abandonment of natural gas in the local mills where naturals gas is still being used in puddling furnaces are those of A. M. Byers & Co., Zug Co., Brown Sf -Ctt, and the Carnegid mill'.at Thirty-third street. These four mills run 162 furnaces of this kind, besides the heating furnaces and the tube works Qf.tbg flrnqi first named. There are few mills in which gas is still used in the heating furnaces, but altogether it has already given away to fully 200,000 bushels of coal daily. The idea that the supply of natural gas would never be exhausted was only entertained for about a year—from 1887 to 1888. After that there were many evidences that the supply would not hold out. During this year there were some firms who became imbued with the idea that all they had to do was to dig a well anywhere apd they could soon get enough gas to supply them. There wery few accidents in any of the mills caused by gas.