Davy Refused to Patent His Safety Lamp

John Buddle, now entirely won over by Davy, was also concerned about a reward. By August there were 144 safety lamps ‘in daily use’ at Walls End, and they were rapidly spreading to all the other collieries in the North-East.91 Buddle urged Davy to take out a patent, pointing out that he could not only make his fortune but control the quality of the lamps issued to miners. Davy consistently refused, although he knew his colleague William Wollaston had made a fortune with a patent on processing...

 The Cognitive Growth of Frankestein's Monster

Mary Shelley’s idea of the mind was, like Lawrence’s, based on the notion of the strictly physical evolution of the brain. This is how Lawrence was provocatively challenging his fellow members of the Royal College of Surgeons in his lectures of 1817: ‘But examine the “mind,” the grand prerogative of man! Where is the “mind” of the foetus? Where is that of a child just born? Do we not see it actually built up before our eyes by the actions of the five external senses, and of the gradually deve...