Evan Thomas Lamp
The western Industrial Revolution changed the British Isles faster and more permanently than any other era in history. As more people migrated into the cities for work and new machinery brought employment in industry, the country was shaped by rail lines, new canals and chimney stacks. One of the industries that grew the most during the 18th and 19th centuries was mining. Raw materials and coal were needed to fuel the factories, and deeper and deeper seems were clawed into the earth.
The Development of Mining Technology
As mines got deeper, the technology behind mining struggled to keep up. Mining was always dangerous, but the deeper the tunnels went, the riskier it became. Engineers all over the country competed to make mining safer, and a slew of new inventions were produced in a technological arms race. Lighting in mines has always been a problem, but open flames became more and more dangerous as the deeper mines were more likely to have flammable gases build up in them. These gases, collectively known as ‘firedamp’, could ignite with even a spark, and there were many terrible explosions that sometimes took hundreds of lives and left whole communities in tatters. The race to find safer lighting was on, and in the early 1800s, inventors like George Stephenson, William Reid Clanny and Sir Humphrey Davy made important discoveries that led to the first gauze chimney safety lamp designs. These were far from perfect, but the laid the groundwork for better lamp designs to come. Probably the best of these was the Evan Thomas lamp.
The Evan Thomas Lamp
The Evan Thomas lamp was a real turning point in the history of mining safety lamp technology. Earlier designs were good, and many lives were saved, but improvements were still needed. Early lamp models like the Davy Lamp and the Geordie Lamp were easily damaged and could be dropped or knocked over easily. Evan Thomas, an ironmonger in South Wales, saw the potential for development of these early designs and soon the ‘Evan Thomas Type No.7 Lamp’ was born. Combining the ideas of earlier safety lamp models with a tougher casing and more durable shape, the Evan Thomas lamp was a vast improvement on earlier models and unlike earlier versions which were used only in the area they were designed, the Evan Thomas lamp was gratefully accepted by mines all over the country and soon the Evan Thomas lamp was the most popular lamp on the market.
The Modern Evan Thomas Lamp
The Evan Thomas lamp proved to be so good, it is still used today in some specific applications. The most notable is the use of the Evan Thomas lamp in the reactor rooms of nuclear subs where the old oil lamp technology’s ability to register harmful gases in the atmosphere has still not been improved upon by modern mechanical sensors. The Evan Thomas lamp is still produced in Aberdare, as it has been for over 200 years, and they are still available to buy for business or personal use!
