Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.

The Davy lamp is a safety lamp used in flammable atmospheres, invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It consists of a wick lamp with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen. It was created for use in coal mines, to reduce the danger of explosions due to the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.

Hebburn is a town in the South Tyneside borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It was an urban district in County Durham from 1894 to 1974. It is on the south bank of the River Tyne between Gateshead and Jarrow and opposite Wallsend and Walker.

January 9 is the ninth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 356 days remain until the end of the year.