Lowe v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

PARTRIDGE, District Judge.

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…