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The Gas Works System:
The Springfield Gas machine was a self-contained automatic gas machine sold by the Gilbert and Barker Manufacturing Company in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The manufacturer's intent was to provide homes and businesses, was good, safe, and relatively inexpensive gas light.
Gas machines operated by forcing air across liquid gasoline, which vaporized and was then piped to burners throughout the house. The system was fueled with gasoline emptied from barrels into a pipe that ran directly into a generator unit, or evaporating tank. As many as twenty-five barrels would be emptied at once, depending on the size of the tank. A pair of pipes ran underground from the generator to the basement. One of the pipes connected to an air pump, the other to a network of pipes that supplied gas to the fixtures in the house.
A blower of air pump powered by a suspended weight that had to be wound periodically like a clock was located in the basement of the house. This unit forced air through a pipe to the generator. A system of pulleys and weights drove the air pump. A large stone weight hung from the basement ceiling beams and attached to the shaft of the pump wheel by a wire cable. As gravity caused the weight to drop, the wheel inside the pumpcase turned, forcing air through the connecting pipe into the generator.
Due to the explosive nature of vaporized gasoline, the generator was placed underground at a distance from the building or buildings to be lighted. It contained four evaporating pans or chambers, arranged one about the other, containing gasoline. Forced air from the air pump moved through each of the generator's evaporative chambers. As the gasoline vaporized in the chambers, the pressurized gas-air mixture was forced into the horse through the other connecting pipe and then to the fixtures in the house through a network of pipes.
The system made it possible for gas to be constantly present at the burners in the light fixtures. As long as the system worked properly, and the burners were closed when lights were not in use, gas would not escape, and a constant pressure of air was maintained in the air pipe, the gas generator, and in the burners in the house's fixtures.
Evidence suggests that the Springfield Gas Machine was installed shortly after Henry Clay McDowell and his wife, Anne, Henry Clay's granddaughter, purchased the estate in 1882. The McDowells installed the system because they lived too far from downtown to acquire gas service from the Lexington Gas Works, a coal gas company established in 1853.
The McDowell's continued to use gas lighting until after the turn of the 20th century, but by 1906 were having problems with the gas system. In a letter from Henry McDowell, Jr. to his mother, Anne, he writes, "you have put up with the very poor lights at Ashland long enough." The "poor lights" appear to be a direct result of problems that developed with the evaporating tank, and not from the poor performance of the system. He continues, "It is quite probably that some rather inexpensive repairs to the evaporating machine (tank) a new pipe from the tank to the house would give as good light as formerly." The McDowells must have liked the Springfield system very much. In fact, Henry Jr. confessed that electricity didn't strike him favorably and he even suggested putting a new gas system in if repairs couldn't be made to the present one. He soon changed his mind. Ashland converted to electricity in 1907 much to the delight of Henry Jr. who admitted to his mother in early May "I am glad to hear that the electric lights..." |