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249
In the Annual Report of the late Metropolitan Board of
Works, for 1884, it was stated—as the result of testing with a
portable photometer—that there are parts of London, the inhabitants
of which do not always get their gas of the quality which it
was thought had been secured to them by Act of Parliament; the
gas having been frequently found to be inferior in lighting power
to the prescribed standard, sometimes by as much as one candle.
There is no way of preventing this, the companies in default being
subject to no forfeiture or penalty, as they are when the gas is
shewn to be defective at the regular testing place. The above facts
point to the necessity for an alteration of the law. The gas
referees, it was stated, approve of the testing of the gas by means
of a portable photometer; and the Metropolitan Board advised the
Board of Trade, that statutory power should be obtained for that
mode of testing, so that the companies may be liable to forfeitures for
gas which the portable photometer shews to be defective in lighting
power. The Board also suggested the expediency of an alteration in
the standard of light prescribed by the statutes. The statutory
standard is obtained by burning sperm candles of six to the pound,
at the rate of 120 grains an hour; and the gas is required to be of
such lighting power as to produce, when consumed at the rate of
five cubic feet an hour, a light equal to that produced by sixteen
such candles. A Committee, appointed by the Board of Trade,
reported adversely to the continuance of the use of the sperm
candle as a standard, it having been proved that, in spite of
precautions taken to secure uniformity in the manufacture of the
candles, there remained considerable variation in their lighting
power. In the Report of the Board for 1887, the subject was again
dealt with, and we were informed that in the interval, a long series
of careful and complete experiments had been made by the Officers
of the Board, under the Board's authority, with the result that the
Pentane air-gas standard, as devised by Mr. A. Vernon Harcourt,
one of the gas referees, appeared to possess, in a higher degree
than any other, the merits of simplicity, accuracy and reliability.
It is satisfactory to find that the County Council, through
its Sanitary and Special Purposes Committee, have taken up