The paper was
modest and unassuming, like everything he did.
It concluded:-- "I believe I may, without presuming too much,
claim both the first idea of applying, and the first application
of this gas to economical purposes."[9] The Royal Society
awarded Murdock their large Rumford Gold Medal for his
communication.
In the following year a German named Wintzer, or Winsor, appeared
as the promotor of a scheme for obtaining a royal charter with
extensive privileges, and applied for powers to form a
joint-stock company to light part of London and Westminster with
gas. Winsor claimed for his method of gas manufacture that it
was more efficacious and profitable than any then known or
practised. The profits, indeed, were to be prodigious. Winsor
made an elaborate calculation in his pamphlet entitled 'The New
Patriotic Imperial and National Light and Heat Company,' from
which it appeared that the net annual profits "agreeable to the
official experiments" would amount to over two hundred and
twenty-nine millions of pounds!--and that, giving over
nine-tenths of that sum towards the redemption of the National
Debt, there would still remain a total profit of 570L. to be paid
to the subscribers for every 5L. of deposit! Winsor took out a
patent for the invention, and the company, of which he was a
member, proceeded to Parliament for an Act. Boulton and Watt
petitioned against the Bill, and James Watt, junior, gave
evidence on the subject.
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