Anthracite Coal
Anthracite coal was first experimentally burned, and its value as a fuel and marketable commodity tested, in the old Fell House, Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, in February, 1808. The experiment was conducted in a very primitive sort of grate built for the purpose by Judge Jesse Fell, then one of the leading men in the community. He had written in letters to relatives describing the achievement, and for some time had contended that if properly ignited the “stone coal,” as it was then called, would burn, but his friends laughed at him. Nevertheless he studied the problem until he decided that it was necessary to have a draft to keep it burning. He then had the grate built of ten-inch bars, forming the front and bottom of a box that he set in brick, and in this he placed the stone coal, lighting it from below by means of splinters of wood and keeping up such a draft with a bellows that the coal soon glowed red hot. He found, too, that when red hot it quickly ignited other coal placed upon it, and, proud of his success, he told his neighbors. They would not believe him until they had, as he wrote, “ocular demonstration of the fact.” Day after day the old room in the tavern was crowded with the people of the little village and the travellers who passed through, and soon to all parts of the region where outcroppings of coal had been discovered the news was borne.