Davy lamp Davy lamp The Davy lamp is a safety lamp for use in flammable atmospheres, invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It consists of a wick lamp with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen. It was created for use in coal mines, to reduce the danger of explosions due to the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called "firedamp" or "minedamp." Davy's invention was preceded by that of William Reid Clanny, an Irish doctor at Bishopwearmouth, who had read a paper to the Royal Society in May 1813. The more cumbersome Clanny safety lamp was successfully tested at
Safety lamp forming a cage. All except the very earliest Davy lamps have a double layer at the top of the cage. Rising hot gases are cooled by the gauze, the metal conducting the heat away and being itself cooled by the incoming air. There is no restriction on the air entering the lamp and so if firedamp is entrained it will burn within the lamp itself. Indeed, the lamp burns brighter in dangerous atmospheres thus acting as a warning to miners of rising firedamp levels. The Clanny configuration uses a short glass section around the flame with a gauze cylinder above