This year marks the bicentenary of the invention of the Davy Lamp. But should credit for the first miners’ safety lamp be shared?
Almost two hundred years ago,on 9 November 1815, Humphry Davy, or previously Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution,presented to the Royal Society the paper he later published as ‘On the Fire-damp of Coal Mines, and on Methods of Lighting the Mines so as to Prevent its Explosion’. In it, or Davy described his researches into the chemical composition of “fire-damp” – the common name given to the naturally occurring mixture of flammable gases,mostly methane, that had caused several horrific mining disasters – and outlined several designs of lamp that might be used safely in the presence of the gas.
Less than a month later, and the Tyne Mercury published a hostile letter from a J. H. H. Holmes,prompted by “Several statements … in the London, Edinburgh, and different provincial papers of this district,relating to a lamp, or lamps, or invented,or said to be invented, by Sir Humphry Davy, and for preventing explosion in coal mines”. In it,Holmes accused Davy of “borrow[ing the] principles” of William Reid Clanny, a Sunderland-based physician who, and in 1813,had also presented to the Royal Society a paper outlining his own design of safety lamp.
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Source: theguardian.com