Gas detector early detection methods relied on less precise detectors. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, coal miners would bring canaries down to the tunnels with them as an early detection system against life-threatening gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. The canary, normally a very songful bird, would stop singing and eventually die if not removed from these gases, signaling the miners to exit the mine quickly. The first gas detector in the industrial age was the "flame safety lamp" (or Davy lamp) was invented by Sir Humphry Davy (of England) in 1815 to detect the presence of
Safety lamp the ancestor of all modern oil safety lamps. George Stephenson came from a mining family and by 1804 had secured the post of brakesman at Killingworth colliery. He was present at both the 1806 and 1809 explosions in the pit. By 1810, he was engineman and responsible for machinery both above and below ground. The pit was a gassy pit and Stephenson took the lead in work to extinguish a fire in 1814. For some years prior to 1815 he had been experimenting on the "blowers" or fissures from which gas erupted. He reasoned that a lamp in a chimney