A meeting of the above Society was held in Brown’s Assembly Rooms, High Street, on Wednesday last. Messrs. F. Bonnett and W.H. Smith were elected members. The minutes of the preceding meeting having been read and confirmed the chairman (Dr. J. Mitchell Wilson) called upon Mr. Easterfield, of Clare College, Cambridge, to read a paper upon “Coal Gas.” Mr. Easterfield began by referring briefly to the early history of coal-gas as an illuminating agent and then went on to describe in detail the manufacture and purification of gas as used for lighting purposes, explaining as simply as possible the chemical changes which take place in the conversion of solid black coal into an invisible gas burning with a brilliant flame. Subsequently he drew attention to the properties peculiar to coal gas and showed experimentally how violent a mixture of gas and oxygen explode if brought into the neighbourhood of a flame. All the important points in the paper were illustrated by a series of striking experiments. A number of experiments and diagrams relating to the manufacture of gas were also exhibited. At the conclusion of the paper an interesting discussion ensued in which Messrs. Bridge, Furnival, Smith and Stiles, besides the chairman and reader of the paper, took part.

[The meeting took place on Jan 5, 1887]