Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
Men were talking in an excited manner; some one opened the door, and said: "There's been an accident in the breaker mine, Mr. Burnham." "What kind of an accident?" "Explosion of fire-damp." "What about the men?" "It is not known yet how many are injured." "Tell James to bring the horses immediately; I will go there." "James is waiting at the door now with the team, sir." Mr.
The colliers live a great part of their life, in those dark holes, in order to get us coal to make us fires to dress our food, and very often are killed, either by the falling in of the roof from above, or from a sort of air called fire-damp, which, if touched with any fire, will blow up like gunpowder, and will kill any person that is near it; the poor colliers are also often smothered by the bad air that is in those damp, dark holes; so you see, little children, what dangers they go through, in order to get us coal, which we could very badly do without.
The painful incidents above described only served to quicken his eagerness to master the difficulty. For several years he had been engaged, in his own rude way, in making experiments with the fire-damp in the Killingworth mine. The pitmen used to expostulate with him on these occasions, believing his experiments to be fraught with danger.
The subject of this important invention excited so much interest in the northern mining districts, and Stephenson’s numerous friends considered his lamp so completely successful—having stood the test of repeated experiments—that they urged him to bring his invention before the Philosophical and Literary Society of Newcastle, of whose apparatus he had availed himself in the course of his experiments on fire-damp.
The result of his thought was the apparatus still affectionately known to the pitmen as "the Geordie lamp." It is a lamp so constructed that the flame cannot pass out into the air outside, and so cause explosions in the dangerous fire-damp which is always liable to occur abundantly in the galleries of coal mines.
But a humbler though not less diligent and original thinker had been at work before him, and had already practically solved the problem of the Safety-Lamp. Stephenson was of course well aware of the anxiety which prevailed in the colliery districts as to the invention of a lamp which should give light enough for the miners to work by without exploding the fire-damp.
Who shakes the seam during tempestuous nights? who puts the miners on the track of an as yet unworked vein? who lights the fire-damp, and presides over the terrible explosions? who but some spirit of the mine? This, at least, was the opinion commonly spread among the superstitious Scotch. In the first rank of the believers in the supernatural in the Dochart pit figured Jack Ryan, Harry's friend.
Although the wages of the miners are much inferior to those of the pitmen in the northern coal-fields, yet they have advantages over their brethren, being exempted from many of the evils to which the northern miners are subjected. They have no fear of the fatal fire-damp or sudden explosions. Intellectually they are also superior, as they are mostly engaged in work requiring the exercise of mind.
Besides, the air grew purer by rising to the heights of the Dochart pit; and the fire-damp, spreading through the atmosphere, would not be strong enough to make any explosion. "To work, then!" repeated Ford; and soon the rock flew in splinters under his skillful blows.
Of course, when Amedee appeared, the conversation was immediately changed, and they began to talk of insignificant things that they had read in the journals; for example, the fire-damp, which had killed twenty-five working-men in a mine, in a department of the north; or of the shipwreck of a transatlantic steamer in which everything was lost, with one hundred and fifty passengers and forty sailors events of no importance, we must admit, if one compares them to the recent discovery made by the poet inquisitors of two incorrect phrases and five weak rhymes in their comrade's work.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking