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 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