"The heroic is for hereafter... for labors of pick and spade by Davy lamp down below."
George Meredith, The Amazing Marriage (1895)
Miners' safety lamps are still referred to generically as "Davy lamps," after Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) who pioneered their design. He was not, however, alone in this endeavor. At the same time as Davy was developing his lamp, railway pioneer George Stephenson and Dr. William R. Clanny were also designing a lamp for miners.
The invention of the miner's lamp allowed for penetration to deeper mining seams, by providing light, albeit dim. More importantly, the lamp also gave an indication of the presence of flammable gases such as methane, by its flame burning suddenly more brightly with a blue tinge. It also indicated areas where oxygen was low, by the flame simply extinguishing, and so also functioned as a safety device.
The greatest design problem was to create
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