Denton, Greater Manchester and then abandoned. After hatting, the most important industry in Denton was the manufacture of lead-acid batteries by Oldham Batteries (Oldham & Son Ltd). In 1865, Joseph Oldham established a millwright general engineering shop and by 1887 this company was manufacturing machinery for the hat-making industry. Another important industry in the area was coal mining and shortly after 1887 the company began making machinery and equipment for this industry, which included miners' portable lamps. Up to this time, miners had always used the safety lamp devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829) but this new battery-powered Davy lamp eventually
Mercury-vapor lamp arc lamps operated in a mixture of air and mercury vapor at atmospheric pressure for lighting. The German physicist Leo Arons (1860–1919) studied mercury discharges in 1892 and developed a lamp based on a mercury arc. In February 1896 Herbert John Dowsing and H. S. Keating of England patented a mercury vapour lamp, considered by some to be the first true mercury vapour lamp. The first mercury vapor lamp to achieve widespread success was invented in 1901 by American engineer Peter Cooper Hewitt. Hewitt was issued on September 17, 1901. In 1903, Hewitt created an improved version that possessed higher