The History of Natural Gas (Part 2)

Pipes made of two to eight foot segments of hollowed-out Canadian white pine logs reflected the primitive state of pipeline technology.  The problems associated with a rotting and leaking wooden pipeline eventually led to the demise of the Rochester Natural Gas Light Company.  In the same year a 5 1/2 mile, 2 inch wide wrought-iron pipeline was successfully constructed to carry waste gas from oil wells near Titusville to 250 townspeople.

But cast and wrought-iron pipelines were plagued by breaks and leaking connections held together by screws.  Before the day of compressors, transmission distance was limited by gas well pressure.  In 1870, Pittsburgh became the first city to start consuming natural gas as a substitute for coal to clean up its smoke-laden atmosphere.  The Natural Gas Act, passed in 1885 by the Pennsylvania legislature, permitted natural gas to compete with manufactured gas.

This proved to be the driving wedge that enabled natural gas to penetrate the manufactured coal gas business and resulted in the formation of Peoples Natural Gas, which by 1887 was serving 35,000 households in Pittsburgh.  Another Pittsburgh natural gas distributor, Chartiers Valley Gas, was the first company to telescope pipe from an initial eight to ten and finally twelve inches in diameter to reduce gas pressure before it entered a home, business or industrial plant.  

By this time screws had given way to threaded pipe to hold pipe segments together.  Dresser and Company, formed in 1880, specialized in pipe couplings, and in 1887 received a patent for a leak-proof coupling that incorporated a rubber ring in the pipe joints; an invention that would dominate the market until the 1920s.

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(Source: "Energy for the 21st Century," Nersesian)