The invention of the gas network

Posted: February 02, 2026

Legend has it that one evening, relaxing by the fire in his home in Redruth, Cornwall, Scottish engineer William Murdoch placed coal dust in the bowl of his pipe and put it the fire. The dust formed gas, which ignited out of the mouthpiece and produced a white flame that shone brightly. A metaphorical lightbulb came on in Murdoch’s head.

Contemporaries reported that by the 1790s, Murdoch had become the first person to have “lit up his house with gas”. Murdoch also realized that the gas needed purification to prevent a strong smell, which he achieved using water.^[1]

Already an employee of the British engineering firm Boulton and Watt—famous for the invention of the steam engine—Murdoch returned to its factories to develop his lighting method. He became responsible for the first commercial use of gas^[2], illuminating the Boulton and Watt factory with his new method:

“In the year 1798 I removed from Cornwall to Messrs. Boulton, Watt and Co.’s works for the manufacturing of steam engines at the Soho Foundry, where I constructed an apparatus upon a larger scale, which during many successive nights was applied to the lighting of their principal buildings, and various new methods were practised of washing and purifying the gas... Since that period I have, under the sanction of Messrs. Boulton, Watt and Co., extended the apparatus at Soho Foundry, so as to give light to all the principal shops, where it is in regular use, to the exclusion of all other artificial light.”^[3]

How London got its first public gas network

Murdoch urged his employers to patent the gas lighting apparatus, but the business chose not to. In their wisdom, Boulton and Watt considered the invention useful only to light the factories carrying out its main business of steam engines.^[4]

Their folly was exposed a few short years later. In 1807, a German inventor named Frederick Winsor demonstrated coal-gas-powered street lamps for the first time, lighting up half of London’s Pall Mall with gas lamps. Winsor was drawing heavy inspiration from French engineer Philippe Lebon’s thermolampe, but that didn’t stop Watt and Murdoch from belatedly claiming to have pioneered gas lighting. Over their protestations, British parliament granted Winsor a charter allowing him to supply gas to the City of London and adjacent suburbs.

Just five years later, London had the world’s first public gas works, which transformed the lives of millions of people by providing reliable light and heat in homes for the first time. The Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company manufactured and distributed gas through a network of underground pipes, lighting streets, public buildings and homes. Samuel Clegg, an apprentice at Bouton and Watt who had worked with Murdoch, was heavily involved in the roll-out. By 1822, there were 200 miles of underground gas mains in London. Gas lighting spread swiftly across the country, and rival gas undertakings established themselves across London—by 1850 there were over a dozen different companies. Two years later, the new House of Commons installed gas lighting, further boosting its popularity.  

This early coal gas was produced in gasworks, which were often located near canals or railways to enable easy transportation of coal. The coal was heated in closed pipes—known as retorts—producing a mixture of hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The gases were filtered to clean them, then stored in large gas holders before being piped to customers. The coke that remained after the coal was heated could be used as a smokeless fuel in fireplaces.

Of course, coal gas can be toxic and explosive. In those early days, inadequate pipes led to many accidents, including carbon monoxide poisoning and explosions. Newspapers reported more than 60 explosions in London between 1815 and 1858, and it's likely many more were not reported.^[5] In 1865, a gas explosion at gas holders in Nine Elms killed several people, prompting outcries about public safety.^[6]

The expansion—and endurance—of the gas network

Over the nineteenth century, the gas industry expanded across Britain. The invention of the Bunsen burner in the 1850s allowed gas to burn with a clean flame, enabling the use of gas for cooking and heating. With the invention of the electric lightbulb, these new uses for gas proved a more durable source of demand than home lighting—although it wasn’t until the 1930s that the majority of homes were connected to the electric grid.  

Increasing regulation improved safety, with the 1847 Gasworks Clauses Act and the Great Central Gas Consumers Act of 1851 introducing monitoring for aspects including pipe laying, fouling of water, waste produced, and testing and inspection. Gasworks became larger and more efficient throughout the 19^th century, but the fundamentals didn’t change until the 1960s and 70s.

In 1949, the British gas industry was nationalized into regional gas boards, merging more than 1,000 different private and municipal gas undertakings, most with their own independent distribution networks.^[7]

Around this time, 90% of Britain’s gas still came from coal, with the remainder coming from oil. With a diminishing stock of coals suitable for gas, the industry began to look for alternative feedstocks. The industry turned to the by-products of oil refineries, before extensive supplies of natural gas were discovered in the North Sea in the 60s. That discovery prompted one of Britain’s largest post-war engineering projects: the conversion of existing gas infrastructure to work with natural gas. The project required access to more or less every home in the country and doubled the capacity of the network.

The future of gas infrastructure

Today, around 85% of U.K. homes still use gas for heating, but the country’s reliance on gas looks set to dwindle in the decades to come. As the country moves towards a net-zero future, the government has launched initiatives including a new Warm Homes Plan, which promises to provide £15bn to households across the U.K. to fund solar panels, heat pumps and batteries. The government is also exploring alternatives to natural gas that still make use of the historical gas infrastructure, including hydrogen heating and repurposing gas pipelines for other infrastructure such as fiber-optic cables.  

Meanwhile, in Cornwall—where the story of gas began—several interesting geothermal energy projects are hoping to generate green heat and electricity for the area. The 280-million-year-old granite mass that the area sits upon is geologically ideal for geothermal energy creation. Back in Redruth, the United Downs deep geothermal project is the first geothermal electricity plant in the U.K. It seems the home of William Murdoch’s discovery is also home to projects that might eventually make gas heating a thing of the past.

^{[1] The Manufactured Gas Industry, Volume 1, page 31
[2] Fostering a new industry in the Industrial Revolution: Boulton & Watt and gaslight 1800–1812
[3] Russel Thomas, The Manufactured Gas Industry: Volume 1, page 26
[4] The Manufactured Gas Industry, Volume 1, page 31
[5] “Over London at Night”: Gasworks, ballooning, and the visual gas field, page 13
[6] The Materiality of Gas and the Industrialisation of Light: A historical account of the introduction of gas street lighting to London in the Nineteenth Century, page 18
[7] Lessons learnt: Past energy transitions page 5}