Edmund Davy 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, and lived there throughout his teen
Safety lamp a scientific instrument for detecting the presence of firedamp". Some pits continued to use candles for illumination, relying on the Davy to warn men when to extinguish them. In the earlier Geordie lamps an oil lamp is surrounded by glass. The top of the glass has a perforated copper cap with a gauze screen above that. The glass is surrounded by a perforated metal tube to protect it. Later versions had an annular chamber around the base of the lamp into which air entered through small (") holes and from which air passed through gauze into the lamp. The glass