Note 48 — Chapter XI · HUMPHRY AND HIS “WONDERFUL LAMP.”

“It will hereafter be scarcely credited,” says Dr. Paris, “that an invention so eminently philosophic, and which could never have been derived but from the sterling treasury of science, should have been claimed in behalf of an enginewright of Killingworth colliery, of the name of Stephenson; a person not even professing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry.” The “enginewright” here sneered at for his ignorance, ultimately rose to be the great George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive. How would the fashionable physician speak of the quondam enginewright of Killingworth colliery now! Stephenson’s lamp was formed on the principle of admitting the fire-damp by narrow tubes, and “in such small detached portions, that it would be consumed by combustion.” The two lamps were, doubtlessly, distinct inventions, though Davy, in all justice, appears to be entitled to precedence—not only in point of date, but as regards the long chain of inductive reasoning concerning the nature of flame by which his result was arrived at.