 |
William
Sugg & Co
1837 - 1969 |
|
|
William
Sugg & Co
1837 - 1969 |
| Open Flame Burners (This is an element of 'Lighting' - 'Burners') The open flame burner is the first type of gas burner developed to burn gas and in its simplest form was purely a hole or a series of holes in a pipe. The well known illustrations below indicate the range of very early burners with descriptive names, some of which are still used to describe flame shapes today. One, 'Cockspur', even gave its name to the street which runs between Pall Mall and Trafalgar Square and a Court which runs off this street, both adjacent to the location of the demonstration of gas lighting by Winsor in 1807 for which Thomas Sugg made and fitted the supply pipe.
The problem with simple 'holes' is that the
size of the hole controls the amount of gas that passes through it and,
apart from making it the right size to start with, should it enlarge
through rusting or wear, the amount of gas will increase and the flame
will get bigger. The by-products of the production of gas from
coal included many noxious and corrosive substances. The complete
removal of all these substances would have been impossible in the early
days of manufacture and there was in any case always an amount of liquid
- largely water - in the supplies. The variation in the amount of gas
supplied to a 'consumer' was naturally of ultimate concern to the early gas
producers because they were paid according to the amount of gas assumed
to be burned by the number of 'lights' at any particular location.
Waste of gas and inefficiency also exercised
the fertile mind of William Sugg. According to Dean Chandler, William 'realised
the great importance of two fundamental principles upon which the
efficient burning of gas for the production of light depended'.
Firstly from Sir Frederick Branwell that it was essential "to keep the
flame hot" and secondly from Professor Tyndall that it was "necessary to
keep the velocity of the gas issuing from a jet slow enough to allow the
proper combination of the oxygen of the atmosphere with it".
William reasoned that the use of an incorrodible, insulating material
which could be accurately produced would provide much of the answer.
The result was his steatite flat flame burner of 1858 which is included in
the following illustrations from William's book.
Whilst this first steatite flat flame burner was made entirely of steatite the major use of the material was as the tip or jet or top of a myriad of burners largely made of brass . The photograph below is of a surviving box of steatite tipped burners.
An Original Box of Coned-Top Flat Flame
Burners, c.1880.
The woodcut below from 'Modern Street Lighting'
by William Sugg shows these table top burners in use in a 10 lt burner
for the Greenock Lamp. These lamps were developed for the lighting
of docks which were busy places in the later years of the Victorian age
with ships carrying goods to all parts of the Empire needing to be
loaded and unloaded at all hours, day and night. This burner is
provided with three supply connections allowing it to be operated with 1
lt, 4 lt, or 10 lt. The steatite tipped burner provided the perfect long term answer for the resistance to the high temperature and corrosion to which all burners were subject and also the means of shaping the flame to provide the best light. The burner below is probably the largest lantern burner produced.
30 lt Open Flame Lantern Burner, 20"
Diameter. Having controlled the flow of gas by a fixed size and /or shape of orifice the other essential aspect of the supply of gas is the pressure at which it is arriving at the orifice. Clearly a much larger flame will be produced by a higher pressure and vice versa. The variation in pressure in the street gas main must have been a real problem for the engineers of the day. There were so many unknowns, such as the capacity of the pipework which was being continually extended to increase the number of street lamps, the means of storing the gas, the time at which demand would rise, the temperature, the phases of the moon etc, etc. Every time a lamp was lit it would affect the others. The result was a very uneven supply and gas flames that varied in performance from minute to minute. If the jet has been designed to provide a specific size of flame for the maximum performance at a specific pressure then the incorrect pressure will fail to provide what is expected. If the gas is being sold on the basis of a price per 'light', the consumer - or vestry - will either pay too much for a small flame or too much for an inefficient large flame, whilst in the latter case, the gas company will also lose because it is supplying too much gas. William Sugg concluded that the only answer was to combine the burner with a governor and designed a series of street lamp governor burners which are illustrated on the page below.
Quoting William's text from 'Modern Street
Lighting' (second edition 1887) opposite this illustration above, he
says:
This is a rare 'collectors item' found by a fortunate relative in the loft of a house in London after the demise of the owner, who had worked in the gas industry for a lifetime. I believe it is a representative's display box because, although we know William insisted on a high level of excellence, padded cases seem a little over the top! You can imagine the impression this would have made on a prospective customer, as the top was swung open to reveal a highly polished set of table top governor burners along with a neat U-tube water gauge for testing the gas pressure at a lamp. These are obviously governor burners of the 1881 pattern which was manufactured for many years. Sales of governor burners were worldwide. The promotional literature advised
So clearly, burners went to the 'Colonies' and the 'Tropics' As there have been many references to steatite, at this juncture it might be helpful to illustrate the production of this useful material. Mined in India it arrived in Westminster in chunks, a bit like coal. The photos below illustrate the production of steatite items. The burner parts and jets were turned on small lathes driven by cat gut from the overhead shafting which ran throughout the factory, originally driven by steam and later by electric motor. The items would have been fired in an oven becoming extremely hard and durable. In addition to applications for gas lighting, the steatite shop in later days produced huge numbers of insulating items for the electrical industry until eventually overtaken by other more economical ceramics.
Steatite Component Manufacture As can be appreciated, the amount of steatite dust or powder that was turned and cut off the thousands of parts was considerable. William, in classic style - and in much the same way as waste from cereal production is turned into compressed biscuits - came up with an extraordinary product. By compressing the steatite powder into metal tins he was able to offer a product that was called "Pearly Queen Tooth Powder"! Clearly abrasive, I suspect that it worked extremely well but I would also suspect that too much brushing could well remove not only the tartar but also the enamel! One of these tins, unused, was presented to a retiring director in my time in the business, so somewhere there may just be another very rare collectors item!
UNDER CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT - PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER
|
|
|
