Testing of Davy's Safety Lamp

Date: January 9, 1816 • Location: Hebburn, United Kingdom

Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and an early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium, and boron the following year, and for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. He is credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.