necessary to combine with its oxygen to form water, is known as disposable hydrogen, and is a measure of the fitness of the coal for use in the manufacture of coal gas. Such coal, although of very small value as fuel, commands a specially high price for gas-making. Cannel coal was used as a major feedstock for the historical manufactured gas industry, as the gas produced from it was valuable for lighting due to the luminosity of the flame it produced. Cannel gas was widely used for domestic lighting throughout the 19th century before the invention of the incandescent gas mantle by Carl Auer von Welsbach in the 1880s. Following the introduction of the gas mantle, cannel coal lost favour as a manufactured gas feedstock as the gas mantle could produce large quantities of light without regard for the flame luminosity of the gas burnt. On October 17, 1850, James Young, of Glasgow, Scotland, patented a method for the extraction of paraffin (kerosene) from cannel coal. It was widely used from 1850 to 1860 in the manufacture of coal oil, which today would be called shale oil. The principal consumer product was the illuminating oil kerosene. In 1860, there were 55 companies in the United States making coal oil from cannel coal, most of them near the cannel coal mines, in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and western Virginia (now West Virginia). The discovery of petroleum deposits in the US, starting with the Drake Oil Well in 1859, made petroleum a cheaper raw material for making kerosene and drove the American oil shale industry out of business. In June 1857, a large gathering to celebrate the laying of a foundation stone of a pedestal on which to raise the retired Locomotion No 1 outside the Stockton and Darlington Railway Station (now North Road Station and Darlington Railway Museum - Head of Steam) witnessed that inside a special cavity in the pedestal were laid many items as a time capsule, and a cannel coal box made by a driver of the locomotive, Robert Murray, as a tribute to Edward Pease (often known as the "Father of the Railways"). See also Ampelite Kukersite Lamosite Marinite Oil shale geology Tasmanite Torbanite References Bibliography Coal Oil shale geology