Coal gas
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Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system. It is produced when coal is heated strongly in the absence of air. Town gas is a more general term referring to manufactured gaseous fuels produced for sale to consumers and municipalities.
Gas Works Park, Seattle, preserves most of the equipment for making coal gas. This is the only such plant surviving in the United States.
An illustration of typical polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Source: NASA
Mantles in their unused flat-packed form
Coke oven at smokeless fuel plant, South Wales
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe
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Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, also known as Professor T. S. C. Lowe, was an American Civil War aeronaut, scientist and inventor, mostly self-educated in the fields of chemistry, meteorology, and aeronautics, and the father of military aerial reconnaissance in the United States. By the late 1850s he was well known for his advanced theories in the meteorological sciences as well as his balloon building. Among his aspirations were plans for a transatlantic flight.
Lowe's mammoth balloon the City of New York, later named Great Western, to be used in a transatlantic flight
Lowe's intended flight from Cincinnati shown in red. Actual flight in blue.
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, c. 1865