Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science/Humphry Davy Edit-a-thon - 4 May 2017

About the event

• Are you interested in history, literature, science, or technology?
• Would you like to help Lancaster University researchers improve the quality of information available online?
• Do you have a laptop or tablet?

If so, join our free Humphry Davy Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was one of the most famous scientific figures of his day, best known for experimenting with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), discovering several chemical elements, and inventing a miners’ safety lamp that revolutionised industry. But did you know that he was also a friend of Byron, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and a poet himself?

Much of Wikipedia’s information about Davy needs to be improved – and you can help us achieve this! Learn new skills and meet new people during our free Wikipedia edit-a-thon. We’ll train you in how to edit a Wikipedia page, give you all the information about Davy that you’ll need, and will even provide a free lunch. We can also give you a free certificate after the event. All you need to do is bring a computer.

Professor Sharon Ruston, of the Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, is one of the co-editors of The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Places are free, but limited. If you wish to attend, please reserve your place here.

How do I prepare?

• Create a Wikipedia account beforehand - en:Special:UserLogin/signup
• Bringing your own laptop or tablet (wi-fi will be provided); there will also be some computers in the room
• Learn about editing if you like: Wikipedia:Tutorial, or Getting started on Wikipedia for more information

Participants

Add your Wikipedia username below.

1. User:Mark L MacDonald
2. User:Aplacey
3. User:Sharonruston
4. User:Anoucks.
5. User:JNwah
6. User:pigmint
7. User:Harrietnewnes 
8. User:HPLane
9. User:Pashcroft93
10. User:Stephen Pumfrey

Useful links

• Help:Referencing for beginners
• Wikipedia:Teahouse - A friendly venue where new (or old) editors can ask questions about anything, with very prompt response times (almost always within an hour, and often much sooner).
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia editing for research scientists

Potential topics, selected resources, and other useful resources

Topics

If you intend to work on a topic listed below, please sign your name next to it. Where discussion of a topic already exists on Davy's page, a link to the relevant section is provided. During the edit-a-thon, you may wish to expand these existing sections, paste your draft edit into a different section, or create a new section of your own.

1. Davy's early life (Humphry Davy#Education, apprenticeship and poetry)Harrietnewnes (talk) 10:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
2. Davy's poetry (the Annual Anthology poems and 'Life') (Humphry Davy#Education, apprenticeship and poetry) (User:JNwah)
3. Davy at the Medical Pneumatic Institution (Humphry Davy#Pneumatic Institution)
4. Davy's involvement with Lyrical Ballads and William Wordsworth (Humphry Davy#Pneumatic Institution) Sharonruston (talk) 11:08, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
5. Davy isolates potassium, sodium, and boron (Humphry Davy#Discovery of new elements)
6. Davy isolates magnesium, calcium, strontium, and barium (Humphry Davy#Discovery of new elements) Pashcroft93 (talk) 10:30, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
7. Davy demonstrates chlorine to be an element (Humphry Davy#Discovery of chlorine) User:aplacey
8. Davy's European travels c. 1814 (Humphry Davy#European travels) HPLane (talk) 10:34, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
9. Davy demonstrates iodine to be an element (Humphry Davy#European travels)
10. Davy's work on the safety lamp, and the ensuing controversy 1 (Humphry Davy#Davy lamp)Pigmint (talk) 10:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
11. Davy's work on the safety lamp, and the ensuing controversy 2 (Humphry Davy#Davy lamp)
12. Davy's work on Herculaneum papyri Anoucks. (talk) 10:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
13. Davy's Presidency of the Royal Society (Humphry Davy#Last years and death)Stephen Pumfrey (talk) 10:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
14. Davy's work on the electrochemical protection of ships' copper bottoms User:aplacey
15. Davy's later life (Humphry Davy#Last years and death)

Selected resources

• Amin, Wahida (2013). The Poetry and Science of Humphry Davy (PDF) (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Salford, UK).

• Davy, Humphry (1800). Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and its Respiration. London, UK: J. Johnson.

• Davy, Humphry (1808). "On Some New Phenomena of Chemical Changes Produced by Electricity". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 98: 1–44.

• Davy, Humphry (1808). "Electro-Chemical Researches, on the Decomposition of the Earths". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 98: 333–70.

• Davy, Humphry (1811). "On Some of the Combinations of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygene". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 101: 1–35.

• Davy, Humphry (1814). "Some Experiments and Observations on a New Substance Which Becomes a Violet Coloured Gas by Heat". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 104: 74–93.

• Davy, Humphry (1821). "Some Observations and Experiments on the Papyri Found in the Ruins of Herculaneum". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 111: 191–208.

• Davy, John (1836). Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy. Vol. 1 of 2. London, UK: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman.

• Davy, John (1836). Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy. Vol. 2 of 2. London, UK: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman.

• Faraday, Michael (1991). Bowers, Brian; Symons, Lenore (eds.). Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe, 1813-1815. London, UK: Peregrinus. ISBN 9780863412349.

• James, Frank A. J. L. (1992). "Davy in the Dockyard: Humphry Davy, the Royal Society and the Electro-chemical Protection of the Copper Sheeting of His Majesty's Ships in the mid 1820s". Physis. 29: 205–25.

• James, Frank A. J. L. (2005). "How Big is a Hole?: The Problems of the Practical Application of Science in the Invention of the Miners' Safety Lamp by Humphry Davy and George Stephenson in Late Regency England". Transactions of the Newcomen Society. 75: 175–227.

• Knight, David (1992). Humphry Davy: Science and Power. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-631-16816-8.

• Lacey, Andrew (2016). "Rethinking the Distribution of Cultural Capital in the "Safety Lamp Controversy": Davy vs Stephenson in Letters to the Newcastle Press, 1816-17" (PDF). Journal of Literature and Science. 9 (2): 1–18.

• Miller, David Philip (1983). "Between Hostile Camps: Sir Humphry Davy's Presidency of the Royal Society of London, 1820-1827". The British Journal for the History of Science. 16 (1): 1–47.

• Ruston, Sharon (2013). Creating Romanticism: Case Studies in the Literature, Science and Medicine of the 1790s. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-26428-2.

• Ruston, Sharon (2013). "The Art of Medicine: When Respiring Gas Inspired Poetry" (PDF). The Lancet. 381: 366–7.

• Sharrock, Roger (1962). "The Chemist and the Poet: Sir Humphry Davy and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 17 (1): 57–76.

Other useful resources

• Crouch, Laura E. (1978). "Davy's 'A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry': A Possible Scientific Source of 'Frankenstein'". Keats-Shelley Journal. 27: 35–44.

• Fullmer, June Z. (2000). Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist. Philadelphia, USA: American Philosophical Society. ISBN 0-87169-237-6.

• Golinski, Jan (1999). "Humphry Davy's Sexual Chemistry". Configurations. 7 (1): 15–41.

• Golinski, Jan (2011). "Humphry Davy: The Experimental Self". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 45 (1): 15–28.

• Hindle, Maurice (2012). "Humphry Davy and William Wordsworth: A Mutual Influence". Romanticism. 18 (1): 16–29.

• "Interactive Timeline: Humphry Davy" (The Royal Institution of Great Britain).

• James, Frank A. J. L. (2000). Guides to the Royal Institution of Great Britain: 1: History (PDF). London, UK: The Royal Institution of Great Britain.

• Jay, Mike (2009). "The Atmosphere of Heaven: The 1799 Nitrous Oxide Researches Reconsidered". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 63 (3): 297–309.

• Kipperman, Mark (1998). "Coleridge, Shelley, Davy, and Science's Millennium". Criticism. 40 (3): 409–36.

• "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" (Archive of All Online Issues).

• Siegfried, Robert; Dott, R. H. (1976). "Humphry Davy as Geologist, 1805-29". The British Journal for the History of Science. 9 (2): 219–27.

• Thomas, John Meurig (2013). "Sir Humphry Davy: Natural Philosopher, Discoverer, Inventor, Poet, and Man of Action". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 157 (2): 143–63.

• Underwood, Ted (2003). "Skepticism and Surmise in Humphry Davy". The Wordsworth Circle. 34 (2): 95–103.

• Unwin, Patrick R.; Unwin, Robert W. (2009). "Humphry Davy and the Royal Institution of Great Britain". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 63 (1): 7–33.

Articles that were created and/or improved during the edit-a-thon

During the event the article on Humphry Davy increased from 43 kilobytes (kb) to 64 kb, so increasing by roughly 50% of its original size. Here is a breakdown of some of the larger changes:

1. Humphry Davy - Section on the Davy lamp expanded by Pigment
2. Humphry Davy - Paragraph on Davy's involvement with Lyrical Ballads added by Sharonruston
3. Humphry Davy - Paragraph on Davy's poetry was added by JNwah
4. Humphry Davy - Section on Herculaneum papyri was created by Anoucks.
5. Herculaneum papyri - Paragraph on Davy's involvement was added by Anoucks.
6. Humphry Davy - Section on European Travels expanded with references added by HPLane
7. Humphry Davy - Mention of poems for Anna Beddoes added, with references by Sharonruston
8. Humphry Davy - Section on protection of ships' copper bottoms created by Aplacey
9. Humphry Davy - Section on Davy's early life was expanded and improved by Harrietnewnes
10. Humphry Davy - Paragraph on nitrogen trichloride accident was expanded and referenced by HPLane
11. Humphry Davy - Section on his presidency of the Royal Society was created by Stephen Pumfrey
12. Humphry Davy - Section on discovering and isolating elements was expanded by Pashcroft93