The Davy lamp is a candle containing safety lamp devised in 1815 by Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.

Davy had discovered that, to explode, the gas must be heated to its ignition temperature and that if such heating is prevented, combustion cannot occur. If the flame in a lamp is surrounded by metal gauze to distribute the heat over a large area, the maximum temperature of the screen is below the ignition temperature of the gas. The first trial of a Davy lamp with a wire sieve was at Hebburn Colliery on 9 January 1816.