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Updated: June 26, 2025
It would seem from the foregoing remarks that in any existing safety-lamp, where one qualification is increased another is proportionately reduced; so it is doubtful whether all the necessary requirements of sensitiveness, resistance to strong currents, satisfactory light, self-extinction, perfect combustion, etc., can ever be combined in one lamp.
He was encouraged to persevere in the completion of his safety-lamp by the occurrence of several fatal accidents about this time in the Killingworth pit.
Sir Humphry Davy’s subsequent modification of the tube-lamp, by which, while diminishing the diameter, he in the same ratio shortened the tubes without danger, and in the form of wire-gauze enveloped the safety-lamp by a multiplicity of tubes, was a beautiful application of the true theory which he had formed upon the subject.
Such was Stephenson’s theory when he proceeded to embody his idea of a miner’s safety-lamp in a practical form. In the month of August, 1815, he requested his friend Nicholas Wood, the head viewer, to prepare a drawing of a lamp according to the description which he gave him. After several evenings’ careful deliberations, the drawing was made, and shown to several of the head men about the works.
The safety-lamp was a coincident invention, made about the same time by Sir Humphry Davy and George Stephenson; and perhaps a still more remarkable instance of a coincident discovery was that of the planet Neptune by Leverrier at Paris, and by Adams at Cambridge.
An angry controversy afterwards took place as to the respective merits of George Stephenson and Sir Humphry Davy in respect of the invention of the safety-lamp. A committee was formed on both sides, and the facts were stated in various ways.
The cord was fastened round Harry's thighs and under his arms, to keep him from rocking. Thus supported, he was free to use both his hands. A safety-lamp hung at his belt, also a large, strong knife in a leather sheath. Harry advanced to the middle of the beam, around which the cord was passed. Then his friends began to let him down, and he slowly sank into the pit.
The lamp can be kept in a pure atmosphere while the sample is obtained by the detecter, and at a greater height than the flame in a safety-lamp could be properly distinguished.
Notwithstanding Stephenson’s claim to be regarded as the first inventor of the Tube Safety-lamp, his merits do not seem to have been generally recognised; and Sir Humphry Davy carried off the larger share of the éclat which attached to the discovery. What chance had the unknown workman of Killingworth with so distinguished a competitor?
Extraordinary changes had occurred in his own fortunes, as well as in the face of the country, since he had first appeared before a scientific body in Newcastle—the members of the Literary and Philosophical Institute—to submit his safety-lamp for their examination.
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