San Francisco Gaslight Co.

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When did the San Francisco Gaslight Company make and bottle Ammonia. Seaching for dates, have antique bottle made by the S.F. Gaslight Co. that was made for ammonia.

-- kathryn chandler (ksc2001@earthlink.net), May 19, 2002

Answers

San Francisco Gaslight Co. was formed April 1, 1873 by the merger of three companies. It morphed into San Francisco Gas and Electric Co. prior to 1906, when the company's main gas plant at the foot of Laguna was destroyed by the quake.

Ammonia-saturated water is a byproduct of coal gas manufacture. Perhaps it was bottled at the "gashouse cove" plant, where gas was manufactured beginning in the early 1880s, or at one of the smaller, older works that were supplanted by "North Beach Station" (sic), alleged to be the finest gas works west of Chicago. Perhaps Pacific Ammonia and Chemical Co., located near the gas works at the intersection of Webster and Francisco, an intersection that no longer exists, bottled the ammonia under contract.

-- robert bardell (bbardell@pacbell.net), May 21, 2002.


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