3-065-842 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Aerophobe, for exploring dangerous mines, 1874. After an explosion of "firedamp," the inflammable gas in a coal-mine, men confined in the underground passages are suffocated by the "choke-damp," or carbonic acid gas...An apparatus of French invention has lately been exhibited in the collieries at Wigan, which is designed to enable men, where there is danger from any bad gas, to walk through and even carry a light, with perfect safety. It is on the same principle as the diver's helmet and air-tube used for going about under water. The inventor is M. Denayrouze, a French engineer...An air-pump, or rather an air-condensing machine, is used to charge a number of portable cylinders with compressed air...The cylinders...are sent down into the mine, with the men who are to use the air. Each man wears a mouthpiece, with a tube of vulcanised indiarubber, kept open by spiral wire, which communicates with the reservoir of air...By means of the combined breath and lamp regulators, with the mouthpiece held between his teeth, a nose-piece closing his nostrils, and goggle spectacles, with expanding rims, serving to shield his eyes from injurious vapours, the man walks freely and safely through the most noxious compounds of subterranean gases'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.