Invention
already is displacing the present fuels for furnaces and cooking
ranges and glass, doing away with delay and such disagreeable objects
as ashes, kindling wood, etc. It has only been within the past few
years that natural gas has been utilized to any extent, in either
Pennsylvania, New York or Ohio. Yet its existence has been known since
the early part of the century. As far back as 1821, gas was struck
in Fredonia, Chautauqua county, N.Y., and was used to illuminate the
village inn when Lafayette passed through the place some three years
later. Not a single oil well of the many that have been sunk in
Pennsylvania has been entirely devoid of gas, but even this frequent
contact with what now seems destined to be the fuel of the future bore
no fruit of any importance until within the past few years. It had
been used in comparatively small quantities previous to the fall of
1884, but it was not until that time that the fuel gave any indication
of the important role it was afterward to fill. At first ignored, then
experimented with, natural gas has been finally so widely adopted that
to-day, in the single city of Pittsburgh, it displaces daily 10,000
tons of coal, and has resulted in building cities in Ohio and the
removal thereto of the glass making industries of the United States.
The change from the solid to the gaseous fuel has been made so
rapidly, and has effected such marked results in both the processes
of manufacture and the product, that it is no exaggeration to say
that the eyes of the entire industrial world are turned with envious
admiration upon the cities and neighborhoods blessed with so unique
and valuable a fuel.
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