Virtual Gas Museum

The birth of modern cities was illuminated by gas light. The new source of light introduced many changes to the domestic and social life of their residents. Although gas lighting was ultimately swallowed up by the darkness of history, it is still possible to encounter traces of its former glory.

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An accidental visitor to a traditional gasworks will see a tangle of pipes, some baffling geometrically-shaped installations and mystifying devices. Such a gas plant resembles an octopus with a thousand tentacles, which has crawled out of the canal at the edge of the city. What happens inside this tangle of pipes? What are the mysterious towers for?

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Gas equipment manufacturers were faced with a considerable problem – how to persuade people who were used to cooking on coal and lighting their homes with candles to use appliances powered by a new, previously unknown fuel?

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Gas hair curling irons with burners

Bathroom water heater

Gas lamps and Welsbach mantle

Token gas meter

Key events in the history of the gas industry in Poland and Europe.

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First bath heated with a gas water heater

This appliance is invented by an Englishman, Benjamin Waddy Maughan. Gas begins to find multiple new applications, and inventions include gas cookers, refrigerators, irons, coffee roasters, boilers, gas heaters and many more.

Gas light gains new brightness and colour

This is a clever invention of Carl Auer von Welsbach – a fabric mantle, made from cotton mesh impregnated with non-flammable compounds, which when heated by a gas flame emits a bright light without burning. This invention continues to be used today.

Natural gas discovered in the Podkarpacie region

The beginnings of natural gas in Poland are connected to crude oil extraction in the Podkarpacie region.

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biography

Stanisław Szczepanowski

Stanisław Szczepanowski was one of the most prominent entrepreneurs of the second industrial revolution in Poland.

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History of Kraków Gasworks

Although the municipal gasworks in Kraków was built after other cities had been operating their facilities for some time, Kraków was the first Polish city to be lit by gas street lamps.

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A postcard from half a century ago – the operation of a traditional gasworks

Together with Adam Król, the retired curator of the Gasworks Museum in Paczków and former manager of the Municipal Gasworks in the town, we return to those times, trying to recreate the operation of former gas plants and their employees.

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Industrial

Less gas in the gas, that is about regulators, i.e. the guardians of pressure and...our wallets

Installed in gas stations or gas connections, regulators constantly watch over the pressure in our home gas systems, thanks to which our gas meters measure the consumed gas correctly!

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Technology

Non-mining methane production methods

Mines are not the only sources of natural gas: the fuel can be produced by chemical or biological synthesis.

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UAVs and satellites to monitor gas pipelines

The latest technologies applied in gas engineering include novel monitoring solutions for the natural gas transmission and distribution infrastructure. Gas pipelines are linear projects which sometimes stretch for hundreds of kilometres, so their inspection with an “eye in the sky” seems a natural solution. It can be done with UAVs and satellites.

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A source of knowledge about the past,
the present and the future of
the gas industry and natural gas

Fors and againsts

of gas lighting

The Earth’s fire

at the beck and call of cities

History of gas

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