Sewer gas destructor lamp
This patented sewer gas lamp, referred to as the sewer gas destructor lamp or sometime affectionately known as the fart lamp was designed by the Birmingham inventor Joseph Webb in the 1800s. It was designed to both light the street and burn off dangerous gases from the sewers.
A build up of methane gas from the new 1860's subterranean sewers designed by Sir Joseph Basaljet was a real threat, with the possibility of leading to underground explosions, the lamp provided the means of out let with out the stench and the bonus of lighting the streets. The Great Stink of 1858, is well recorded and the design in part helped mitigate the issue by creating a dome below the lamp to collect the gas, which had a hollow tube above that slowly fed the lamp with gas, the heat of which create the through flow to draw more gas into the lamp.
Only one such lamp now exists in London and continues to be part of the original the sewer system that ran through the embankment and into a network beneath the streets. The lamp is located just off the Strand in London and continues to function using the biogas which is generated from the sewer system.
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