Specification of the Patent granted to FREDERICK ALBERT WINSOR, of Pall Mall, in the County of Middlesex, Esquire; for certain Improvements upon his former Patent Oven-stove, or Apparatus for carbonising all Sorts of raw Fuel and Combustibles, and reducing them into superior Fuel of Coke and Charcoal, as well as for extracting and saving during the same Process the Oil, Tar, pyroligneous vegetable Acid, and ammoniacal Coal Liquors, and for extracting and refining all the inflammable Air or Gas so as to deprive it of all disagreeable Odour during Combustion, and rendering the Gas itself salutary for human Respiration when properly diluted with atmospheric Air, and various Methods of applying the above several Products to useful Purposes. Dated February 7, 1809.

To all to whom these presents shall come, &c.

NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I the said Frederick Albert Winsor do hereby declare that my said invention is described and ascertained in manner following; that is to say: The gas-light apparatus consists of two principal parts; the one serves to carbonise coals, &c. and extract the smoke by heat, and the other part to cool, decompose, and refine the smoke; both vessels must be made air-tight, to obtain a perfect analysis of coal, or other fuel, and combustibles. Philosophers have long since contrived to analyse fuel, &c. in very small quantities, by the wellknown chemical apparatus of retorts and glass receivers; but the trouble, expense, and difficulty attending this operation, even on a small scale, has hitherto prevented any contrivance on a larger scale for the useful applica

tion of the several component parts of coal and other fuel. Since my first patent, in 1804, and my publicly recommending the introduction of coke and gas lights by numerous advertisements, enlarged iron retorts and huge gasometers, have been, and are now made use of in some manufacturing towns, as appears by the Philosophical Transactions, those of the Society of Arts, &c. and also from the evidence in opposition to the Gas Light Bill in the last Session of Parliament. But such unwieldly, costly, and dangerous apparatus can never be used in private houses, nor for lighting streets, &c. Hence the following apparatus is entirely new in its construction and application, for it operates diametrically contrary to all the known chemical apparatus hitherto used, as well as to those enlarged charcoal ovens and gasometers employed by Messrs. Murdock, Boulton, Watt, and Company, of Soho, near Birmingham; those of Messrs. Phillips, Lee, and Company, of Manchester, as described in the Philosophical Transactions, and in their evidence before a Committee of the honourable the House of Commons, in opposition to the Gas Light Bill; those of Mr. Cooke of Birmingham, in Nicholson's Philosophical Journal; those of Mr. Clegg, of Manchester, as published by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c.; those of Mr. J. W. Davis, of Tanley Moore, in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine; and, lastly, those of Mr. Parkes's, in his celebrated Chemical Catechism. All these apparatus are on the principle of an enlarged charcoal furnace, (such as there are plenty about London,) connected with large gasometers. These ovens will contain iron retorts, full of wood or coal in the centre. A fire of raw coal is made to play around them; by which contrivance above half of the heat is

necessarily

necessarily lost in the brick-work, from the natural expansion and rarefaction of caloric always flying from the centre, whereas my fires and flues are always contrived in the midst of the raw fuel to be carbonised. The gasometers, or gas holders, contain large reservoirs where the gas is suffered to accumulate to one thousand cubic feet in bulk, which, besides the danger, prevents its being thoroughly decomposed and refined in such masses, whereas in my condensors, the gas is so infinitely subdivided into minute particles, that all its tar, oil, bitumen, and ammoniacal liquor, must needs be decomposed and precipitated before combustion.

First, house and chamber stoves may be constructed of iron or other metal, of earthen or stone ware, made fire-proof, of pipe-clay, or any other fire-proof composition. Their form in general is that of the German draft stoves, but they may be made round, square, angular, cylindrical, conical, oval, or any other fancy shape; and the cylinder which separates the fire from the coal inside may be made equally different in shape, provided that its bulk occupies from one-third to one-half of the area within the stove, so that the heat may more equally be distributed among the surrounding coal or fuel; for instead of surrounding any iron or other retorts filled with coal or other fuel to be analysed, by a large coal or charcoal fire, I place my fires into the midst or centre of the vessels charged with raw fuel; and I employ the refuse coke and coal only to burn in those cylinders or iron cones surrounded by said raw fuel; hence the fire and heat generated in the centre expand by the laws of nature in all directions, but chiefly sidewards and upwards, and a much greater quantity of caloric is thus generated by means of a good

draft,

draft, and is more equally distributed among the coal so as to cause a speedier and more perfect carbonisation. By this mode the fires never come into contact with the fuel to be coked and decomposed, and no calcination whatever can take place; a very great saving is produced in the expenditure of raw fuel commonly burnt under and around these iron retorts, copper pots, and digesters employed in a like process, where above half the caloric generated expands from, but never towards a centre; hence it is sooner lost in the iron or brick-work inclosing it than it heats or carbonises the raw fuel placed in the centre of the fire or surrounded by its flames. These principles and effects have often been demonstrated, exemplified, and approved of in my numerous public lectures. By this method, one-third of a bushel of refuse coke may generate sufficient caloric to carbonise a whole bushel of coal, so as to produce one bushel and a half of good coke again, besides from five to six pounds of oil-tar, from seven to eight pounds of strong ammoniacal liquor, and from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and sixty cubic feet of pure gas, all which proportions will be obtained more or less, agreeably to the nature and qualities of the coal or other fuel; the said oil-tar may be converted again into several qualities and properties of essential oil pitch and asphaltum, and the ammoniacal liquor may be beneficially applied by agriculturists, dyers, chemists, manufacturers of sal-ammoniac, carbonate of ammonia, and other more costly salts, by chemical combinations. The said coke may be beneficially applied to family, culinary, and chemical purposes, as well as for smelting iron, &c. on a large scale: all which facts have already been proved before a Committee of the honourable House of Commons, and which VOL. XVIII-SECOND SERIES..

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were

were ordered by the House to be printed. The cylinders or cones containing the fires may be so constructed as to give a horizontal, perpendicular, oblique, serpentine, or reverberating direction to the fire, heat, or flame, in its passage through the raw fuel or other combustibles to be analysed; the heat and flame may be led up and downwards, to the right and left, and in all possible directions through the carbonising fuel, for the longer the fire draft is detained in its passage, and the greater the circuit it makes through the fuel, the sooner and the better will be the process of carbonisation as well as the quality of products precipitated in the condensors.

Second, in my large succession stoves principally made of fire and other bricks, divided into several compartments and closed with iron covers, the fires run from one, two, three, four, or more grates, through a number of flues in the midst of coal, and meet in the centre at one chimney; these compartments are either larger or smaller, to hold from one peck to one sack and more of coal or other fuel, are charged and discharged in succession, without in the least interrupting the process of the other compartments, so that the operation of the furnace goes on day and night without any hindrance. From each compartment, a separate flue or conductor carries the raw smoke to the great main connected with the condensor, so that when one of them is discharging of coke, to be re-charged with coal, &c. the communicating flue or tube to the main is shut by a cock or valve, or otherwise, in order to prevent the access of air to the great main; but as soon as charged and covered in, the communication to the main is restored, that the raw smoke may freely pass to the condensor. In this manner furnaces of any dimensions or capacities