Miners’ safety lamps

In 1812 he was knighted by the prince regent for his contributions to electrochemistry, married a wealthy widow Jane Apreece, and was thus able to retire from the Royal Institution at the age of thirty-four, although he remained the director of its laboratory. It was in this capacity that he appointed Michael Faraday as an assistant in the laboratory early in 1813. Later that year with his wife, her maid, and Faraday as an assistant, amanuensis (scribe), and reluctant valet, Davy embarked on an eighteen-month tour of the European continent, visiting many laboratories and sites of natural and cultural interest. On their return, Davy invented, with Faraday s assistance, the miners safety lamp, which reinforced his reputation in applied science. With a confidence that was shared by all romantics of the time, Davy believed that nothing was beyond his reach, and in 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Society The U K. National Royal Society. This was a position he was ill-equipped to undertake after... 

Heath and Frost proposed a modification of the miners safety lamp so that it was possible to use it to heat a small piece of iron to incandescence which could then be touched to the open end of a fuse. This operation was done in such a manner that no flame or spark was produced outside the enclosure of the lamp (Ref 1)... 

Audiences, men and women, watched for the most part, as the lecturer (often very near the front row) did the experiments, which might be spectacular - as when potassium, and miners safety lamps, were the subject. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, in her poem 1811 , wrote how, for American tourists in decayed London, some future antiquarian might (Barbauld 1995) ... 

PERSONAL PROTECTION wear thick working gloves and safety glasses all persons who work below ground and on designated sites on the mine surface should be provided with suitable protective helmets an approved dust respirator and a miners safety lamp are also required. 

He recognised that Chlorine was an element in 18 lOAD. His most practical invention was the Davy Lamp, a safety lamp used by miners in the pits. 

In 1815, Sir Humphry Davy invented the miners safety lamp, which consisted of a wick lamp with the flame enclosed behind a mesh screen which acted as a flame arrestor. If flammable gas mixtures were present, the flame burned higher and with a blue tinge. Miners could measure the height of the flame using a... 

The chronology of the most remarkable contributions to combustion in the early stages of its development is as follows. In 1815, Sir Humphry Davy developed the miner s safety lamp. In 1826, Michael Faraday gave a series of lectures and wrote The Chemical History of Candle. In 1855, Robert Bunsen developed his premixed gas burner and measured flame temperatures and flame speed. Francois-Ernest Mallard and Emile Le Chatelier studied flame propagation and proposed the first flame structure theory in 1883. At the same time, the first evidence of detonation was discovered in 1879-1881 by Marcellin Berthelot and Paul Vieille this was immediately confirmed in 1881 by Mallard and Le Chatelier. In 1899-1905, David Chapman and Emile Jouguet developed the theory of deflagration and detonation and calculated the speed of detonation. In 1900, Paul Vieille provided the physical explanation of detonation... 

Sir Humphry Davy, 1778—1829. English chemist and physicist. One of the founders of electrochemistry. Inventor of die safety lamp for miners. He was the first to isolate potassium, sodium, calcium, barium, strontium, and magnesium. Davy in England and Gay-Lussac and Thenard in France, working independently, were die first to isolate boron. 

Th. Goldschmidt, 52, 3346 (1958) Safety igniter for miner s lamps prepd from Al-bearing Ce alloys GerP 926654 (1955)... 

Corpse Light. It is the blue flame inside the Miner s Safety Lamp, also called Davy Lamp,... 

Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829)- An Engl chemist who isolated Na, K, Ba, Ca Sr metals by electrolysis and devised the miner s safety lamp, briefly described in Vol 3, P C362-R, under Coal Mine Explosions and Fires Ref Hackh s (1946), 253-54... 

For lighters, sparking toys, industrial torches and miner s safety lamps... 

Describe a miner s safety lamp, and state the exact principle on which its use depends. 

Sir Humphry Davy invented a safety lamp for miners in which a flame was surrormded by a wire gauze cylinder. Can you explain the reason why the lamp was constructed in this way ... 

In 1815, Humphry Davy was invited by the Chairman of a Society for Preventing Accidents in Coal Mines to invent a solution. His elegant and simple invention is shown (Pigure 246) in the frontispiece of his 1818 book On The Safety Lamp For Coal Miners With Some Researches On Flame. Davy had earlier studied flames and their propagation and noted that flames could not propagate through small holes. Thus, his solution was merely to surround the lamp with a cylinder of wire mesh that still left the flame open to the atmosphere. The mesh conducted away the heat of the flame, thus cooling it so that the temperature methane would encounter at the lamp would be lower than its flash point. The flame itself could not penetrate the mesh. ... 

FIGURE 246. Depictions of aspects of Humphry Davy s Safety Lamp for Coal Miners (London, 1818)- His ingenious solution to lamps that would ignite coal gas with deadly results was incredibly simple- The fine metallic mesh would cool the coal gas below its flash point. Thus, although the flame and combustible gas were in open contact, there would be no explosion. 

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