Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829)

The Davy Lamp

The famous scientist Sir Humphrey Davy had a link with mines through his invention of the miners safety lamp, which became known as the Davy lamp.

Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall in 1778 and became a chemistry lecturer at the Royal Institution. He discovered several chemical elements, including sodium and potassium and also investigated chlorine and its oxides. He became Sir Humphrey Davy in 1812, and later discovered iodine.

In 1815 he was asked for help by some miners from Newcastle, who explained the dangers of methane gas in coal mines. The gas could be ignited by the candles miners had in their helmets and many explosions were caused by this. Davy separated the flame from the gas, and his lamp later became widely used.

In 1820 he became President of the Royal Society.

Miners Lamps

An earlier safety lamp had been invented by Dr William Clanny in May 1813 and was first tried in the Harrington Mill Pit on 20 November 1815. At the same time George Stephenson, an engineer at Killingworth Colliery, invented a safety lamp, which was similar in design to Davy's. Stephenson went on to become a famous railway engineer.

The Davy lamp had a metal cistern which held the wick and oil and was covered by a tight-fitting wire-gauze cylinder. Methane (or firedamp as it was known) could explode and burn in this cistern but its flame did not reach gas outside the lamp.

The Report of the Royal Commission on Mines, published in March 1886 took a close look at miners lamps.