British physicist and chemist (1791-1867) best known for his development of the first dynamo and the discovery of electromagnetic induction. ALS signed “M. Faraday,” one page both sides, 7.25 x 9, December 10, 1835. Handwritten letter to "J. Murray" in Ipswich, commenting on the controversy surrounding Humphry Davy's invention of a miner's safety lamp. In part: "I have always avoided the Lamp controversy. It is not my controversy. It can easily be settled by an appeal to facts; and they are worth a thousand opinions either from me or any other person whatever. Now, I know little of the actual condition & practice with regard to the lamp in mines, so that I have no right to give an opinion. On the other hand there are hundreds of persons who know these matters well, and they are the persons from whom knowledge should be obtained. It was these circumstances, namely, my dislike to controversy, and my ignorance relative to the practice of the lamp in mines, that made me desire not to be examined by the Committee of the House of Commons…I am not aware that I ever admitted Sir H. Davy's lamp to be unsafe in those circumstances for which he constructed it:—but this I know, that what I have said must have been in conversation, and that it is not the usage to publish such matters. I have always been careful to avoid this controversy, but I am quite sure that I may speak to a friend or answer his questions." In fine condition.
Faraday had been working as Humphry Davy's assistant during the development of the 'Davy lamp,' an early safety lamp for use in flammable atmospheres such as mines. Others took issue with Davy's claim to have invented the lamp: namely, the Irish inventor William Reid Clanny, who had presented to the Royal Society a paper outlining his own safety lamp design years earlier in 1813; and railroad engineer George Stephenson, who, it seems, developed the same concept independently from Davy, at the same time. Davy insisted his device was sufficiently different in principle to Clanny's version, while most accused Stephenson of stealing Davy's concept. In 1833, a House of Commons committee found that Stephenson had equal claim to having invented the safety lamp. An interesting letter on a noteworthy early 19th-century scientific controversy.
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