Julius Pintsch

The gas, distilled from naphtha or other petroleum products, was widely used in railway transport and marine navigation applications from its invention in 1851 until the 1930s.

Born in Berlin, Pintsch completed an apprenticeship as a tinsmith in 1833[citation needed] and, after his journeyman years, took up a position at a local lamp factory.

Having obtained his Meister certificate, he established his own small workshop near the municipal gasworks at Frankfurter Bahnhof in Berlin-Friedrichshain, in 1843.

The system was successfully trialled in 1874 on the London and North Western Railway for its Irish Mail service: one eight-cubic-foot (0.23 m3) tank of compressed gas in each carriage would provide for two Euston-to-Holyhead return journeys.

The gas became a popular means of illuminating buoys, beacons and unmanned lighthouses, because it allowed the devices to remain lit for several months without servicing.

After the trials, the Corporation of Trinity House purchased the associated gasworks and re-erected it at their Blackwall depot to manufacture Pintsch gas for its own use.

By 1886, over 200 Pintsch gas-lit buoys, beacons, lighthouses and lightships were operational, in North and South America, Australia, and around the coasts of Europe, as well as on the Suez Canal.