A Geordie Lamp

This was just about the first nick-nack that Mrs Talpa and I bought when we set up home. As I remember we bought it from Exchange and Mart the printed pregenitor of Ebay. It is, of course, a miner's safety lamp from Gateshead on Tyne in the North East of England.

Safety lamps provide illumination in coal mines and are designed to operate in air that may contain coal dust, methane, or firedamp, all of which are potentially flammable or explosive. Originally, miners used open flame lamps to provide illumination and these could ignite the flammable gases which collected in mines, causing explosions. Safety lamps used various techniques to prevent the flame from igniting the surrounding atmosphere, reducing the danger of explosion.

The first workable safety lamps were made in 1815, one by George Stephenson, which became to be known as the Geordie lamp, and the Davy lamp, invented by Sir Humphry Davy. Both worked on the principle that a flame enveloped in a fine wire gauze of a certain fineness will not ignite flammable gases.

Our lamp is a Geordie.