Eureka Reporter | 1905-09-08 | Page 4 | "Firedamp."

firedamp firedamp and afterdamp words brought into terrible ence in many disasters in mines pre berve the older english sense of damp vapor and especially nox lous vapor precisely where the word came from philology does not know but the earliest existence of its use quoted by dr murray s dictionary Is caxton s 1480 after the dragon come a goot and ther come out of ats a bomp that betoken honger and grete deth of bacon Is one of the writers of his time who speak of the damps of mines damp gradually came to be applied to visible vapors such as evening mists and the transition to the sense of moisture la obvious but in damping down a furnace one finds a relic of the berb damp in the sense of suffocate