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Humphry Davy
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Humphry Davy was one of the most celebrated British chemists of the early 19th century, credited with having discovered several elements through electrolysis. Davy got interested in chemistry as an apprentice to an apothecary when he was a young man (though he was eventually dismissed after his experiments led to explosions). After studying chemistry, Davy got interested in the properties of gases and is famous for having sniffed nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") in 1800 and discovering its intoxicating effect (this led to a brief fad of nitrous oxide parties). By 1802 he had been hired as a lecturer for the Royal Institution in London and had started experimenting with the effects of electricity on chemical compounds. By running a current through a number of substances, Davy was able to isolate metallic elements such as potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium and barium. He is ... credited with having built a safe miner's lamp (the Davy lamp) and one of the first arc lamps.
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Humphry Davy is most associated in many minds with the invention of the miners' safety lamp. As this produced its light by the flame from burning oil, his relevance to the proceedings of an Electricity Historical Society is not immediately obvious. His achievements were... very wide-ranging and included being the first to observe (in about 1802) that an arc of brilliant light is formed between two pieces of carbon connected to a high voltage electricity supply. This principle was further developed by many engineers throughout the 19th century until arc lamps were widespread in public buildings and open spaces in the early 20th century.
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Humphry Davy was born the son of Robert Davy, a wood carver, and Grace Millet in Penzance, Cornwall. He taught himself a great deal through reading, but ... attended local grammar schools in Penzance and Truro. In 1795 he was apprenticed to John Bingham Borlase, surgeon of Penzance, where he was introduced to the rudiments of science by Robert Dunkin, a saddler. In 1798 he joined the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol as an assistant to Thomas Beddoes. There he began researches into heat and light which he later published. In 1799 he published the first volume of West Country Collections and Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration.
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Humphry Davy demonstrates his new electric light for the members of the Royal Institution of London. Power is drawn from the banks of batteries in the basement and rapidly used up by the intense light. Electric light was then only a scientific curiosity, practical only when expense was no object.
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Humphry Davy was born on December 17, 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, England. He received his education in Penzance and in Truro. His father died in 1794, and Davy, in an effort to help support his family, became an apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary. Davy's most important investigations were devoted to electrochemistry. Following Galvani's experiments and the discovery of the voltaic pile, interest in galvanic electricity had become widespread. The first chemical decomposition by means of the pile was carried out in 1800 by Nicholson and Carlisle, who obtained hydrogen and oxygen from water, and who decomposed the aqueous solutions of a variety of common salts.
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Humphry Davy was born on Dec. 17, 1778, in Penzance, Cornwall. He was apprenticed when he was 16 to an apothecary in Penzance, where he evinced a great interest in chemistry and experimentation, using as his guide Lavoisier's famous work, Traité élémentaire de chimie. His obvious talents attracted the attention of Gregory Watt and Davies Giddy (later Gilbert), both of whom recommended him to Dr. Thomas Beddoes for the position of superintendent of the newly founded Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. He worked there from October 1799 to March 1801.
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Humphry Davy