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A type of Davy lamp with apertures for gauging flame height. The lamp consists of a wick lamp with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen. The screen acts as a flame arrestor; air (and any firedamp present) can pass through the mesh freely enough to support combustion, but the holes are too fine to allow a flame to propagate through them and ignite any firedamp outside the mesh.
The explosion, called the first disaster at the Saint-Louis coal mine, was the first firedamp explosion in the Ronchamp and Champagney coalfields (Haute-Saône) and one of the first in France. It was also one of the deadliest in the history [ fr ] of the Ronchamp coal mines , killing twenty and injuring sixteen.
Both the Davy and Stephenson lamps were fragile. The gauze in the Davy lamp rusted in the damp air of a coal pit and became unsafe, while the glass in the Stephenson lamp was easily broken, and allowed the flame to ignite firedamp in the mine; later Stephenson designs also incorporated a gauze screen as a protection against glass breakage. [18]
A Davy lamp, an early example of a safety lamp The tragedy inspired Hodgson to raise public concern about the hazards of mining. Public interest was fed by a short (16-page) pamphlet written by him and published prior to the second disaster in late 1813.
The Davey Safety Lamp was made in London by Humphry Davy. George Stephenson invented a similar lamp but Davys invention was safer due to it having a fine wire gauze that surrounded the flame. This enabled the light to pass through and reduced the risk of explosion by stopping the "firedamp" methane gas coming in contact with the flame.
The mine was not "more than ordinarily gassy", but there is some evidence that the identified points of leakage might have been points of accumulation from leaks elsewhere. The lamps in use were Davy pattern [2] and naked lights called "midgies" in some areas. The coroner found no evidence that the midgies were connected with the explosion.
On the day of the disaster 159 men and boys were underground working a shift that started at 6.00 a.m. and would have ended mid afternoon. The disaster took place at about 10.45a.m. in the Crombouke mine (seam) at a depth of about 530 yards and 700 yards from the pit-eye (shaft bottom). The miners in other areas of the pit were wound to the ...
Twenty-nine witnesses were called. The evidence indicated that the explosion resulted from defective mine ventilation and the use of naked flames underground, (Note: both the Davy lamp and Geordie lamp safety lamps had been invented in 1815, and widely used in mines at the time) despite warnings having been sent to the mine owner by Mackworth.