The Liberator

LIGHT WITHOUT COMBUSTION.—The National Intelligencer, speaking of the Electric Light which has lately made so much noise in London, says that in 1818 they published accounts of such a light having been discovered in Paris about that time, and refers to a letter of Judge Meigs to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington on the subject. An extract from the letter says—'Since I wrote you, I have seen an account of a discovery of a singular and highly important character announced in Paris by a Professor Meinike, a German probably. viz., an artificial gas, confined in glass, assuming, by an electric shock, a permanent, steady light, without heat or combustion! Here is a grand desideratum, indeed; a candle which can be thrust into cotton innocuous; into a cistern unextinguished; which can be placed under one's pillow while we sleep, and pulled out at pleasure. The whale may keep his blubber, and the shark his liver,' &c.

Without endeavoring to take away the merit of this discovery, we would state that Professor Brand claims the merit of this discovery for Sir Humphrey Davy, and has publicly made this statement, where there are thousands who saw the great chemist produce such a light frequently in his lectures; but then it was only in experiments, without a thought of applying it to domestic illumination.