Nor is the utility of this invention limited to the operations of mining. In gas manufactories, spirit warehouses,[39] or druggists' laboratories, and in various other situations, where the existence of an explosive atmosphere[40] may expose persons to danger, the Safety-lamp may be advantageously used; and as science proceeds in multiplying the resources of art, this instrument will no doubt be found capable of many new applications. [39] The danger of carrying a naked light into an atmosphere impregnated with the fumes of spirit was awfully exemplified by the loss of the Kent East Indiaman, by fire, in the Bay of Biscay, on the 1st of March 1825. [40] In cases where there is any suspicion of accumulations of carburetted hydrogen from the leakage of gas pipes, or from other sources, the safety-lamp should always be employed. A terrible accident occurred some years since at Woolwich, from a room filled with the vapour of coal-tar, for the purpose of drying and seasoning timber intended for ship-building. As the combustion arose from the flame issuing through the flue, which ran along the apartment, at the moment the damper was applied at the top of the building, it is evident that, had a wire-gauze guard been used, the accident could not have occurred. The house was completely demolished, and nine persons were unfortunately killed. By the permission of the President and Council of the Royal Society, several accounts of these researches, and of the invention and use of the Safety-lamp were printed, and circulated through the coal districts. It might have been fairly expected that, in a district which had been so continually and so awfully visited by explosions, against which no human foresight had as yet been able to provide a remedy, the disinterested services of the greatest chemist of the age would at least have been received without a dissentient voice, and that his invention of security would have escaped the common fate of all great discoveries, and been accepted with every homage of respect and gratitude; but the inventor of the Safety-lamp was doomed to encounter a bitter hostility from persons whom a spirit of rivalry, or a feeling of hopeless emulation, had cemented into a faction. From the period of the first announcement of the Safety-lamp, a prejudice against its use was industriously circulated amongst the miners; and some persons even maintained the monstrous proposition, that any protection against the explosions of fire-damp would injure more than it could serve the collier, by inducing him to resume abandoned works, and thus continually to inhale a noxious atmosphere. The utility of the lamp having been established, in spite of every opposition, the claims of Sir H. Davy to its invention were next publicly challenged.