The Davy lamp is a safety lamp containing a candle, devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.

Davy had discovered that, to explode, the gas must be heated to its ignition temperature and that if such heating is prevented, combustion cannot occur. If the flame in a lamp is surrounded by metal gauze to distribute the heat over a large area, the maximum temperature of the screen is below the ignition temperature of the gas. The first trial of a Davy lamp with a wire sieve was at Hebburn Colliery on 9 January 1816.

Gas Detector

The lamp also provided a crude test for the presence of gases. If flammable gas mixtures were present, the flame of the Davy lamp burned higher with a blue tinge. Miners could also place a safety lamp close to the ground to detect gases, such as carbon dioxide, that are denser than air and so could collect in depressions in the mine; if the mine air was oxygen-poor (asphyxiant gas), the lamp flame would be extinguished (black damp or chokedamp).

Comparison with Geordie lamp

There was some controversy, since George Stephenson also produced a similar safety lamp in 1816 called the Geordie lamp.

How far the difference was appreciated at the time is hard to say; supporters of both men seem to have regarded the other as having plagiarised their man's idea and copied it wrongly. The Geordie lamp (with no gauze around the flame) gave a brighter light and was popular with the miners. The Davy lamp was simpler and cheaper to make and was popular with the mine owners.^{[citation needed]}

There were safety arguments on both sides: in principle, a poorly maintained (or badly designed) Davy lamp could overheat the gauze if it met a high concentration of methane. The gauze rusted very easily in the damp conditions of mines, making the lamp hazardous. A serious objection to the Geordie lamp was that it stopped being a safety lamp if the glass was broken. Both original lamps were faulty, and led to numerous attempts to improve the design, by using multiple gauzes placed above the flame, and with a glass surround to improve illumination. However, they were still poor sources of light and matters did not improve until the widespread introduction of small electric hand lamps later, in the Victorian period.

Accident rate

The introduction of the Davy lamp actually led to an increase in accidents in mines as the availability of the lamp encouraged the working of mines that had previously been closed for safety reasons.^[1]

Modern Lamps

The modern day equivalent of the Davy lamp is the Protector GR6S Garforth lamp which is used for firedamp testing in all UK coal mines. A modified version of this lamp is used to transport the Olympic Flame for the torch relays. They have recently been used for the Sydney, Athens, and Turin torch relays and will be used for the Special Olympics Beijing relay. The lamps are still made in Eccles.

References

1. Christopher Lawrence, The power and the glory: Humphry Davy and Romanticism, reference in Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences Cambridge: University Press, 1990 page 224

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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; from the article "Davy lamp". Image Credit.

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