Hurricane proof copper street lanterns - advert issued by Alder & Mackay, Edinburgh : advert in The Municipal & Road Engineers' Standard Catalogue, 1929 - 1932 ; The Standard Catalogue Company ; London ; 1929
The second edition of the vast publication the "Municipal and Road Engineers' Standard Catalogue, 1929 - 1932" contains many hundreds of pages of adverts showing plant, appliances and supplies across a wide range of 'municipal' engineering such as road construction, lighting, refuse disposal, water supplies and sewerage and park equipment.
Alder & Mackay were a long-established manufacturer of street lighting equipment and, as importantly, gas meters - based at the New Grange Works in Edinburgh. Unsurprisingly they had quite a slice of the Scottish street lighting market, as seen in the names of the lanterns shown that include the 'famous Edinburgh'. The advert also shows examples of clock controllers, an attempt to mechanise the lighting and extinguishing of gas lighting by automatic means rather than relying on the army of 'lamp lighters' whose job it had been to go around every evening lighting gas lamps and every morning extinguishing them. The clock method is straightforward - the 'pressure wave' system was, as I understand it, a method of sending a pulse of pressure through the gas mains to initiate the lighting or extingushing of the lantern.
Hurricane proof copper street lanterns - advert issued by Alder & Mackay, Edinburgh : advert in The Municipal & Road Engineers' Standard Catalogue, 1929 - 1932 ; The Standard Catalogue Company ; London ; 1929
The second edition of the vast publication the "Municipal and Road Engineers' Standard Catalogue, 1929 - 1932" contains many hundreds of pages of adverts showing plant, appliances and supplies across a wide range of 'municipal' engineering such as road construction, lighting, refuse disposal, water supplies and sewerage and park equipment.
Alder & Mackay were a long-established manufacturer of street lighting equipment and, as importantly, gas meters - based at the New Grange Works in Edinburgh. Unsurprisingly they had quite a slice of the Scottish street lighting market, as seen in the names of the lanterns shown that include the 'famous Edinburgh'. The advert also shows examples of clock controllers, an attempt to mechanise the lighting and extinguishing of gas lighting by automatic means rather than relying on the army of 'lamp lighters' whose job it had been to go around every evening lighting gas lamps and every morning extinguishing them. The clock method is straightforward - the 'pressure wave' system was, as I understand it, a method of sending a pulse of pressure through the gas mains to initiate the lighting or extingushing of the lantern.