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In the first decades of the nineteenth century, gaslight led this transformation, at least for city dwellers and factory workers in England. The gas fuel of the time was a by-product of the distillation of bituminous coal into coke (the "charcoal of coal"), and coke production was well established in England, whose economy had been based on coal for more than a century. The English preferred burning hard, light, porous coke in both their home hearths and industrial furnaces. Unlike bituminous coal, which in its raw state burns with a smoky yellow flame, coke burns with a uniform and intense heat that produces no sparks and little soot or smoke. "It seldom needs the application of the poker—that specific for the ennui of Englishmen," noted one writer of the time.

Coke manufacture involved shoveling coal into vessels called retorts, which were set in large ovens and heated—a process that dissipated the tar and gases present in the coal. During the eighteenth century, coke manufacturers captured and sold the tar, which was used for caulking ships, but they released the coal gas into the air and let it go to waste. Although it had long been known that such gas would burn with a luminous flame and scientists had experimented with igniting bladders filled with coal gas and other flammable substances, until the turn of the nineteenth century, no one had developed a practical application for it.

In 1801 French engineer Philippe Lebon gave the first public demonstration of functional gaslight when he displayed, in Paris, what he called the thermolampe. This furnace housed a retort that fed distilled flammable gas—likely wood gas—to a condenser, then through a series of pipes to an outlet. Lebon imagined that his thermolampe would be used for both lighting and heating a household: "The inflammable gas is ready to extend everywhere the most sensible heat and softest lights, either joined or separated at our pleasure. In a moment we can make our lights pass from one chamber to another.... No sparks, coals or soot will incommode us any longer. Neither can cinders ashes coals or wood, render our apartments black or dirty or require the least care." He outfitted his own home with a thermolampe and sold admission for viewing it in an effort to arouse public interest. Many were curious, few were persuaded, and the thermolampe went no further.

Gaslight found its first sustained application as light alone in British machine shops and cloth factories, where the limits of tallow and whale oil were keenly felt. This was especially true in the winter, when the working day continued long after darkness fell, and the wavering light cast by such illuminants made precision work difficult. To light their workrooms, some large factories needed hundreds, even thousands, of tallow candles or whale oil lamps. Each required individual attention—lighting, snuffing, replacing, filling, cleaning—never mind the stink, the irritating smoke, and the heat. In addition, any simple accident could mean disaster. Some owners of large factories so feared a conflagration that they kept their own fire engines on hand. Such light was costly, too. According to historian M. E. Falkus,

All factories ... used considerable quantities of oil and tallow in winter months. In 1806, one of the largest of Manchester's spinning factories, McConnel & Kennedy, burned candles for at least eight hours on the shortest days and averaged four hours lighting a day for six months of the year.... The annual cost of lighting McConnel & Kennedy's factory in 1806 was about £750. This firm burned an average 1,500 candles each night for 25 weeks in the year and consumed more than 15,000 lbs. of tallow.

William Murdoch, chief engineer at Boulton and Watt—one of most prominent firms in England and builder of the first steam locomotive—experimented with coal gas at the same time Lebon was developing his thermolampe. Although others were also considering how to use coal gas, Murdoch achieved the first real success. His system differed from Lebon's