8

A bright spirit

Only a name, nothing more is mentioned in Goethe’s diary. Lampadius. Today a memorial plaque and a lamp commemorate the man and his invention.
Be it fertiliser, the processing of cocoa beans, paints for buildings, bituminous roofing felt, sugar from beet or his “Letters on chemistry for ladies of learning and domesticity” … The research of this polymath who was appointed as professor to the mining academy in 1794 when he was only 22 years old was never without an immediate practical usage.
In 1811 Lampadius installed a small distillation unit to produce coal gas from hard coal that he feed into a thermolamp. At the window of his house in Fischergasse (Fisherman’s lane) he lighted the very first gas lantern on the European continent.