William Hall Barnett (1802, in Bradford – August 1865, in Brighton), is described as a 'founder' in his 1836 patent, and an 'ironfounder' in his 1838 patent, and later as an engineer and gas engineer, working in Brighton, UK. He worked for many years for the Brighton and Hove General Gas Company. Patents UK Patent 7129 June 1836 "Generating and Purifying Gas" UK Patent 7615 April 1838 "Obtaining Motive Power" UK Patent 7727 July 1838 "Manufacture of Iron" His patent of 1836 is recorded in the Mechanics Magazine as "Certain improvements for generating and purifying gas for the purposes of illumination". He also contributed the lead article for the Mechanics Magazine on 23 September 1839, titled "Barnett's improved method of working gas retorts", which again relates to production of coal gas. The patent "Obtaining Motive Power" relates to some very early work on the gas internal combustion engine, which is described in more details below. Contribution to early gas engines William Barnett was an engineer involved in the early development of internal combustion engines, and his work and patent are described over several pages in Dugald Clerk's book on Gas and Oil Engines. In Barnett's UK patent (No 7615 of 1838), which was entitled "Production of motive-power", Clerk states that "Barnett's inventions as described in his specification are so important that they require more complete description than has been accorded to earlier inventors", and he then proceeds to discuss Barnett's patent over several pages. The patent describes three types of internal combustion engine run using gas as a fuel. These use two key inventions that were important to the early commercial gas engines (which do not appear until over 20 years later). One of the engines described in the patent uses compression of the fuel/air mixture in the power cylinder, the system which Clerk describes as "now so largely used in gas engines. The Frencheman, Lebon, it is true, described an engine using compression, in the year 1801, but his cycle is not in any way similar to that proposed by Barnett, or used in modern gas engines". The patent also describes a method for igniting the gas/air mixture within the cylinder using a flame transferred into the cylinder via an 'igniting cock'. This was a mechanism extensively used in many of the early commercial gas engines in the latter part of the 19th century. The engines themselves are of