Coal mining has never been a very safe job, but it is much less risky today, thanks to an invention called the miner's safety lamp. The first lamp of this kind was invented by Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, in 1815. At that time, the industrial...

The Davy lamp is a safety lamp containing a candle, devised in 1815 by Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp. Davy had...