On the Priority of Invention of the Safe-lamp. 205" 



explosion would not pass, and communicate with the external 

 gas, — was the idea I had embraced, as the principle upon which 

 a safety-lamp might be constructed, and which I stated to se- 

 veral persons long before Sir H. Davy came into this part of the 

 country. The plan of such a lamp was seen bv several, and the 

 lamp itself was in the hands of the manufacturer during the time 

 he was here, at which period it is not pretended he had formed 

 any correct idea upon which he intended to act. With any 

 subsequent private communication between him and Mr. Hodg- 

 son 1 was not acquainted, nor can it in the slightest degree af- 

 fect my claims. Tliat I pursued the principle thus discovered 

 and applied, and constructed a lamp with three tubes, and one 

 with small perforations, without knowing that Sir Humphry 

 Da\-y had adopted the same idea, and without receiving any hint 

 of his experiments, is what I solemnly assert. To my statement 

 (which may be procured at Mr. Baldwin's) you are bound to give 

 credit, unless by the evidence of facts and dates you are able to 

 disprove it. If vou are in possession of any, I call upon you to 

 lay them before the public. If not, as Editor of a .lournal pro- 

 fessing to be independent, I trust you vv-ill acknowledge that you 

 have hastily committed an act of great injustice. 



KiUiiigwoitb, Marcli 15, 1817. G. StEPHENSON. 



I trust I have always evinced my earnest desire to be impartial ; 

 and many who have endeavoured to ol-trude improper articles 

 into the Philosophical Magazine, by inducements which should 

 never be held out to any journalist, can vouch for my indepen- 

 dence. 



1 had " read the statements" to which Mr. Stephenson al- 

 ludes. Nuniliers of people as well as Mr. S. had turned their 

 attention to the devising of a lamp to protect miners against ex- 

 plosions ; and some had actually published their ideas, while 

 with Mr. S, all was still only an unpublished idea. To the jie- 

 riod of the conception of an idea I attach no iuiportance what- 

 ever ; and if I may judge of the idea by the form it manifested 

 at its birth, it was an abortion. 



Mr. Stephenson's lamp tried on the 21st of October 1815, 

 was not a safe-lamp. A lamp with one orifice for admitting air, 

 " ivitk a slide" over the orifice " to regulate the quniitity to be 

 admitted," could be nothing else hut an exploding lamp ; for, to 

 make the lamp burn in atmospheric air, the orihcc must be so 

 wide that on going into an explosive atmosphere the combus- 

 tion could not fail to pass the orifice and explode the mine. 



Ot\ the IDth of October Sir II. Davy announced that explosion 

 would not ])ass through small tubes ; and 



On the 4th of November .Mr. Stephenson tried one with three 



.siuall 



