CHAP. VJI. SCENE AT THE NEWCASTLE INSTITUTE. 



119 



Mr. Stephenson's numerous friends considered his lamp 

 so completely successful having stood the test of re- 

 peated experiments that they urged him to bring his 

 invention before the Philosophical and Literary Society 

 of Newcastle, of some of whose apparatus he had 



LITEKARY ANE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE, NEWCASTLE.- 



availed himself in the course of his experiments on fire- 

 damp. After much persuasion he consented to do so, 

 and a meeting was appointed for the purpose of receiv- 

 ing his explanations, on the evening of the 5th of 

 December, 1815. Mr. Stephenson was at that time so 

 diffident in manner and unpractised in speech, that he 

 took with him his friend Mr. Nicholas Wood, to act as 

 his interpreter and expositor on the occasion. From 

 eighty to a hundred of the most intelligent members of 

 the Society were present at the meeting, when Mr. 

 Wood stood forward to expound the principles on 

 which the lamp had been formed, and to describe the 

 details of its construction. Several questions were put, 



