A New Safety Lamp.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 459, 2 April 1890, Page 2

A New Safety Lamp.

The London Daily News describes a new miner’s patent safety lamp, which is one of the recent inventions in electrical appliances. “ Everyone knows,” the News says, “that the two prime requisites of a miner’s safety lamp are that it should give sufficient light to the worker and that there should not be even the possibility of contact between the light and the explosive gases generated in mines. The new lamps are admirable examples of simple, clever mechanism. The light is strong and brilliant. The liny eleetric light inside the lamp would, if it could be .seen by itself, resemble a fire-fly, but its power isenormously multiplied by the facetted lens, or‘ bull’s eye,’ through which it is projected outwards The great invention is the solution employed in the zinc and carbon battery lo produce the electiicnl current. The composition of this fluid is, of course, a secret. The fluid may be had fur tonpence or a shilling a gallon ; and one little charge of it in the miner’s lamp is enough to snpply light for twelve hours —four hours longer than the working day in many of the mining districts. It is scarcely necessary to repeat that the electric light, or glow, requires no air to feed it. The contact which produces the light is itself produced by the movement of a diaphragm acted upon by compressed air. If the lamp were broken, the air would escape, and in the very act of that escape the light would go out before the conditions of an explosion could arise.”