Geordie lamp the base so that it gave more light and tried new versions on 4 and 30 November. This was presented to the Literary and Philosophical Society (Lit & Phil) of Newcastle upon Tyne on 5 December 1815. Although controversy arose between Stephenson's design and the Davy lamp (invented by Humphry Davy in the same year), Stephenson's original design worked on significantly different principles from Davy's final design. If the lamp were sealed except for a restricted air ingress (and a suitably sized chimney) then the presence of dangerous amounts of firedamp in the incoming air would (by its combustion) reduce
Davy lamp letter from Davy (which he intended to be kept private) describing his findings and various suggestions for a safety lamp was made public at a meeting in Newcastle on 3 November 1815, and a paper describing the lamp was formally presented at a Royal Society meeting in London on 9 November. For it, Davy was awarded the Society's Rumford Medal. Davy's lamp differed from Stephenson's in that the flame was surrounded by a screen of gauze, whereas Stephenson's prototype lamp had a perforated plate contained in a glass cylinder (a design mentioned in Davy's Royal Society paper as an alternative