FOR THE CHILDREN'

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2705, 8 January 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

FOR THE CHILDREN'

r J’IiE MEN WHO GAVE US LIGHJ

—What this Story Tolls Us.— Now tlmt men have conquered dartthat wo tan fill a place Haiti by turning a tap, it w ham to imagine what it must have been like to live oofore men found out liow to mal lijrjit. To-day, a child can nil a dart room with light b.Y touching a svvn or turning a tan • but oven a king coum not have done that a hundred. [iipj. The men who began to ngnt world with gas were laughed at they were idle dreamers,, and oen utse men declared that lighting bouses and towns by gas was a mad idea But the men plodded on, as all inventors did, lighting against ignorance and sui stition, and they won the day. it ts one of the most honerul sips in the world when the world laughs at you, and we can never pay the debtp e on to the men who strumded hard to ben - lit the world while those who looked on laughed. ‘ if you please, will you give me some What would you think if somebody came to the door and said, that:' it would sound strange indeed to you; but your grandparents must have heard it often. Think of a place in which gas is not used, where there is no electnc light where there are no matches, then you get an idea of what things were like when your grandfather was a little bov. He will remember when the servant had to burn old rag overnight to make tinder for the morning; how, before it was light, she would have to get up and strike a piece of flint and make sparks fly from it. If the tinder were damp or the flint old, then there was nothing lor it but to go next door and borrow some fire. How do you think we first got fire and light Nobody really knows; but it is supposed that men, ages and ages ago, first found that sticks would burn if dropped into seme hole where melted lava from a volcano lav boiling. Or they may have seen trees catch fire through being struck by lightning. _ Men learned that by rubbing two pieces of wood together they could cause them to catch fire, and for thousands of years that was the way in which they set alight to their wood. Savages in many parts of the world still do this; but, as wet wood cannot be made to light in this way, they keep fires always burning where the forests are damp, or, at any rate, during the rainy season. Striking fire from flint came a very long time after the rubbing of wood, for during thousands of years men did not know how to get and use iron. When they got used to making fires with which to cook their food and to keep themselves warm at nights, they found that certain resins or gums from trees would burn with a bright flame and last longer than wood alone. So they would melt the resin and dip the twigs into it, and so make torches, which would serve to light their homes at night. This sort of light had to serve for ages. In fact, the iron stands in which torches used to be fixed are still to be seen, on old houses. We had no gas in any streets in the world when the nineteenth century came in. Boys ran about the town at night carrying torches, or links, as they were called, and if you wanted to go to a friend’s house after daylight had gone you had to hire a link-boy to light the way. Napoleon and Nelson never saw a gas lamp. In their days the best lights were candles and miserable little oillamps, just as men had had for hundreds of years before. When you read about the past splendours and marvels of the palaces of the East, or of the great luxury and delight of the great baronial halls of England, you must remember that those /places were gloomy and murky at night, with their smoky lamps and dim candles or torches. When you read about the wonderful speeches which Pitt and Burke used to make in the House of Parliament, you must remember that if those speeches were made after dark, the House, had to be lighted up with candles. When King William IV. was making a speech to the House of Com. Dions, he had to stop, because it was too dark for him to read, and he waited until candles were brought in. Yet there was gas to be had then, as there is now, if men had but known how to get it. —A Great Blaze of Light that Set a Clever Man Thinking.— In a coalmine, at Whitehaven, gas used to escape from the coal into the pit. This gas, catching fire, produced a flame a- yard wide and two yards long. The gas. kept escaping, so the flame continued to burn, and the miners did not know how to put it out. Wliat they did was to build up brickwork round the flame, then put in a metal tube, which they carried to the top of the pit. The gas rushed through this tube and rushed high in the air, over the mouth of the mine, and there it burnt for a long time anil’ at night lighted up the country around. The story of this was printed in 1733, and it set a clever man, called Dr. Clayton, thinking: for in 1737 ho began to try experiments with coal-gas. He did not quite know what it. was, so lie called it. “the spirit of coal.” He used to burn coal in a retort and catch the gas iii bladders. Then to amuse his friends lie would prick a hole in the bladder, and, putting the hole near the lighted candle, would startle everybody bv letting the gas blaze away until none of it was left. Dr. Clayton had really gone so far towards making coal-gas that he ought to- have gone further, and made a success’ of his invention; but lie did not know how great a discoverv he had made, and nothing serious was done with gas for over fifty years. One day, in 1777, a young Scotsman walked into the office of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, the steam.engine makers of Soho. Birmingham, and asked for work. He was so- nervous when answering Mr. Boulton’s Questions that lie let his hat drop to. the ground. The hat made such n noise on touching the floor that Mr. Boulton was surprised, and asked the reason. The young man explained That the lint was a wooden one, which he himself made on his

father’s lathe. Mr. Boulton thought +h i? anybody who could do this was no man, ami forthmth engaged he Young Scotsman with the Wooden Bat who invented Gas-light'. -« •• That young man was Wdham - urdnek the inventor of “° t i J „ name really was “Murdoch, but a-. I* mdish people could not pronounce the nwin the 1 Scottish way he changed it to Murdock, so that >t shouWspelit . iq +hev pronounced it. He was porn in 17/54 'at Old Cumnock, Ayrshire and is The same William Murdock of whom you read in the story of the men who made the railways. Murdock was a very clever man. He had a wonderful brain, and was a 1 ways inventing things, some oi which .e of much importance. But ho -vas oO modest that he never oared for th o tliim's for Ims own suke, he onl\ uimi *d hfi masters to .got the erodit for ■ |„. did, and his fellow-men to en+l !* Vmc’fit As Murdock was no Sd a woAman, Boulton and Watt sent him into Cornwall where they built engines. He lived in a cottage at —How the Gas-man Frightened the Village by Night.— ' , Here it was. that to made Ins model adventure with it. He set it going on the road late one night, without, faaiin" tried it before, except, m his own room. When the engine got up steam it raced away from its maker. Murdock had no idea it would go so fast. It soon disappeared, and lie heard cries or terror in the distance. Murdock ran as fast as he could, and found that the cries came from the hps of th-» village clergyman, who, seeing the little engine, hissing and aglow" with fire, had taken it to be some terrible monster.

(To be Continued.)