USES OF GAS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10167, 23 July 1924, Page 8

USES OF GAS

DEMONSTRATED AT WEMBLEY. The British Empire gas exhibit in the Palace of Industry at Wembley occupies a space of over 12,000 square feet; the capital invested in the industry is £160,000,000. Facts of this kind were furnished in plenty at a luncheon at the Carlton Hotel recently, in connection with the Exhibition, in which the gas undertakings of the Empire are co-operating, and at which Air F. W. Goodenough, chairman of The committee, presided, reports the London correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” Explaining that the exhibit had been organised and paid for by the gas undertakings generally, both municipal and company, Tanging from Aberdeen to Penzance and from Dover to Cork, Mr Goodenough said that the industry everywhere had joined in the effort to demonstrate by the exhibit what the service of gas to the Empire could bo. Oversea undertakings, he added, as well a§ those in the British Isles, were represented, “ and I would like,” ho added, “to emphasise the fact that our allocation is in the very centre of the Palace of Industry.” The spirit of coal, said Mr Good'enough, might he taken to typify what it was intended should bo made plain to all at the Exhibition. It was symbolised in the fiery red poster of the exhibit proclaiming that light, heat, Mid power were all to be found in the black piece of coal. They were striving, he said, to devise the most economic and satisfactory way by which, without defiling the atmosphere, and with the minimum of time, labour, and trouble, the fullest advantage might be obtained from coal. Keeping that idea of the spirit of coal in mind, they would show in the course of the exhibition its industrial application and possibilities, consider it historically, and, not least interesting or important, treat of its by-products which included the wonderful things that,could bo got from that apparently uninteresting thing “ a lump of coal,” which, black as a conjurer’s hat, was quite as remarkable for the number of things that came out of it.

The exhibit is expected to demonstrate tiie evil of making smoke, and how in a scientific and economic way this danger to health and comfort can be removed. Diagrams, charts, and pictures are being arranged to show how smoke is allowed to disfigure town •and country—Manchester’s extra laundry hill, for example, as a result of the smoke evil, is set down at £250,000 a year. It will be shown that the. gas industry is concentrating _on turning •the coal at the gasworks into efficient smokeless fuel to take the place of coal, and quite a wonderful variety of the chemical by-products thus recovered will be bottled and shown at Wembley.