Lowe

The patents in suit here are for an improvement in the art of manufacturing illuminating and heating gas from crude oil and steam. The earliest gas, of course, was made from coal. A bed of bituminous coal was placed in a retort, and heated from below; the resultant gas passing off above. The first use of water seems to have been to force steam over the incandescent bed of coals; the water being decomposed and the result being hydrogen, as H2, and carbon monoxide. This was known as the “blue water gas,” from the color of its flame, and was of little or no use for illuminating purposes, although of great calorific (235 B. T. U.).

The next step was the invention of Prof. T. S. C. Lowe, the father of the plaintiff in this suit. See Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Co. v. New Haven Gaslight Co. (C. C.) 39 Fed. 268 . His apparatus consisted of two vertical chambers, connected by a throat at the top. The second chamber was nearly filled with refractory brick, arranged in checkerboard formation. The first chamber was filled with coal, and, by means of an air blast, this coal was heated to incandescence. The gases thus produced passed through the throat, and thence into the second chamber,…