Edmund Davy the health of men and animals." Edmund Davy Edmund Davy FRS (1785 – 5 November 1857) was a professor of Chemistry at the Royal Cork Institution from 1813 and professor of chemistry at the Royal Dublin Society from 1826. He discovered acetylene, as it was later named by Marcellin Berthelot. He was also an original member of the Chemical Society, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Edmund Davy was a cousin of Humphry Davy, the famous chemist who invented the Davy lamp for the safety of miners. Edmund, the son of William Davy, was born in Penzance, Cornwall,
Safety lamp 1881 carried out extensive tests of all types of lamps and the final report in 1886 noted that there had been good progress made in producing electric lamps giving a light superior to that of oil lamps and expected economic and efficient lamps to become available soon. This turned out not to be the case and progress was slow in attaining reliability and economy. The Sussmann lamp was introduced into Britain in 1893 and following trials at Murton Colliery in Durham it became a widely used electric lamp with 3000 or so reported by the company in use in 1900