According to the U.S. Census of Manufactures (1905), "the coke industry in Everett is unique, inasmuch as illuminating gas is the primary product and coke really a by-product, while the coal used is brought from mines located in Nova Scotia."
The older processes for the commercial preparation of this salt, which were based on the ignition of nitrogenous substances with an alkaline carbonate and carbon, have almost all been abandoned, since it is more profitable to prepare the salt from the byproducts obtained in the manufacture of illuminating gas.
In his earlier years he devoted himself to chemistry, both theoretical and applied, publishing papers on the preparation of gold and platinum, numerical relations between the atomic weights of analogous elements, the formation of aventurine glass, the manufacture of illuminating gas from wood, the preservation of oil-paintings, &c. The reaction known by his name for the detection of bile acids was published in 1844.
A process devised by him for the manufacture of illuminating gas from turpentine and resin was in use in New York for a time.
It is clear from these facts that, prior to Murdoch's experiments, it was known that illuminating gas could be obtained by the destructive distillation of coal, but the experiments which he began at Redruth in 1792, and which culminated in the lighting of Messrs Boulton, Watt & Co.'s engine works at Soho, near Birmingham, in 1802, undoubtedly demonstrated the practical possibility of making the gas on a large scale, and burning it in such a way as to make coal-gas the most important of the artificial illuminants.
