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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mcvax!ukc!stc!inset!dave
From: dave@inset.UUCP (Dave Lukes)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: coal mines and candles
Message-ID: <1097@inset.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Nov-86 10:06:42 EST
Article-I.D.: inset.1097
Posted: Tue Nov 11 10:06:42 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Nov-86 05:02:26 EST
References: <238@sri-arpa.ARPA> <145@fortune.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@inset.UUCP (Dave Lukes)
Organization: The Instruction Set Ltd., London, UK.
Lines: 33

In article <145@fortune.UUCP> stirling@fortune.UUCP (Patrick stirling) writes:
>I dimly recall from school that the lamp was called a 'Davies safety Lamp',
>presumably invented by Davies (!). It worked, I think, on the principle
>that the metal shield would conduct heat well enought to prevent the
>flame front of the burning bas from getting through the shield. The lamp 
>also worked as a coal gas indicator - when there was coal gas present,
>the candle flame had a blue (I think) aura.
>patrick

Right about the lamp, wrong about the inventor:

1) The name was Davy (Sir Humphrey): President of the Royal Society

2) He DIDN'T invent it: it was actually invented (many years before I
seem to remember)
by George Stephenson(sp?) of Stephenson's Rocket and Locomotion fame.
It was known in the north of England as the Geordie Lamp.

A royal commission eventually determined this some while later.
(Although it didn't decide whether he'd stolen it or not!).

This is a classic example of social and professional snobbery:
Davy was an upper-class scientist, while Stephenson was a working class
(unqualified) engineer: guess who got believed initially,
in spite of the fact that the Geordie Lamp had been IN USE for years prior to
Davy's invention (if indeed he did invent it independently).

	Yours angrily (:-),
-- 

		Dave Lukes. (...!inset!dave)

``Fox hunting: the unspeakable chasing the inedible'' -- Oscar Wilde