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Canaries in coal mines (2018)
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoWeird. That device had to cost many times more than a canary.
- ginko 4y agoCoal miners probably liked their canaries quite a bit.
- anotheraccount9 4y agoYes, and keeping and improving morale is priceless. If they perceived the canary as a companion, keep it alive was important.
- baobabKoodaa 4y agoYes. Maybe there's a sense of duty and reciprocity involved, since the canary is the one saving miners' lives.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoMiners would not have afforded it either, 1800's coal miners in the Midlands and southwest of England would have included a fair share of children since they could deal with narrower spaces better. Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd was building deep diving gear in the 1800s. This would have been very niche and very expensive. Not to be overly cynical but this was likely used as a soirée entertainment contraption rather than intended for actual mine use.
- jakzurr 4y ago> soirée entertainment contraption rather than intended for actual mine use Disturbing; and I seem to remember reading that people did use vacuum pumps for similar horrors. However, looking at the wear on the device in the first pic, I'm hoping that the story explained by the museum is true.
- capableweb 4y agoWith the device you could use one canary many times, instead of just having use for one canary one time. One could argue about the morality/ethics of using one canary many times, but it seems simpler at least than to keep tens/hundreds of canaries available at every mine.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoIn other words: there's an opportunity here for a startup offering subscription-based Canaries as a Service - someone will come every day to the customer to deliver new canaries and take spent ones. Canaries become the startup's responsibility, so the mine can focus on its core competency; something opex over capex, synergy etc. Invest now!
- Nextgrid 4y agoThe canary cage needs DRM and a network connection to make sure only "authorised" canaries can be used and aren't past their expiry date nor recalled.
- hnbad 4y agoCombine this with a side gig of processing expired canaries.
- gpderetta 4y agoNo, no, as a side gig, you can be the canary!
- alex_suzuki 4y agothese canaries are strictly on-premise, or can we shift them to the Cloud too?
- KMag 4y agoDon't forget web3 on-chain canaries!
- crazygringo 4y agoEven so, that doesn't necessarily make it any less economically sound. If it cost as much as 10 canaries, but replaced the need for 20 canaries (over a lifespan of 10-15 years), it still checks out from a business sense. And the device itself lasts for decades so it's amortized across many years. Not to mention the additional cost and complexity of a "canary supply chain". Unlike bottles of oxygen, you can't just warehouse canaries for months without constant daily care. Now obviously there are emotional/ethical elements as well as mentioned by other commenters... but I just want to point out that these don't have to be opposed to the economics of it, but can be in addition to it.
- modriano 4y agoI bet that it enabled miners to get back to mining quicker, as they didn't have to bring in a replacement canary to check if the air was safe yet. So I bet that's the financial justification for the expense.
- credit_guy 4y agoMost likely they would need a replacement canary. For humans the aftereffects of carbon monoxide poisoning can last for weeks. Canaries will probably need some time to recover too. If the canary doesn’t chirp, it probably does not function well as a warning system. You need to keep checking on it visually, which means you can only work within sight of it, and this limits your ability to work.
- tzs 4y agoI'd expect that many mines have bottlenecks when exiting, like elevators, so a group of miners evacuating because their canary died might have to wait a while in some safe area to exit. They would want to be able to monitor for gas in that safe area. So they would need a second canary. And they would have had to keep that second canary separated from the first so that when they enter some place that will kill the first it doesn't take out the second there. That seems like it would be quite a hassle. Having one canary that can be reset after a gas detection would be a lot easier to deal with, and gives them a lot more flexibility if they can't promptly evacuate.
- capableweb 4y agoThis seems to be blogspam, I first read this article over here (years ago I think), which seems to be the original one: https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/canary-resuscitator/ https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/canary-resuscit...
- TSiege 4y agoThis article looks like an abridged publication of the one you linked to that was published about a week later in 2018. At the bottom of the article OP shared they even link to the original article and mention the original publication, "This article originally appeared on the MSIM Blog, explore more of their stories at blog.msimanchester.org.uk" So it seems more like a republishing, which is common for smaller media publications to do to expand reach
- capableweb 4y agoThe article OP shared does not link to the original article, but to the general page where the original can be found, specifically "https://blog.msimanchester.org.uk/ https://blog.msimanchester.org.uk/". The original article also contains more images and more information. Seems fair to use the original when it is the original and also better than the copy.
- quietbritishjim 4y agoSounds like you just defined blogspam.
- dang 4y agoOk, we changed the URL to that from https://museumcrush.org/this-device-was-used-to-resuscitate-canaries-in-coal-mines/ https://museumcrush.org/this-device-was-used-to-resuscitate-... after seeing your comment. I'm posting this a little later. Thanks!
- mdip 4y agoThat's really cool. I had assumed they always sacrificed the bird and I can't imagine everyone being OK with that over time. Regardless of the cost, most people don't relish the idea of killing an animal even if it means their own survival so it doesn't surprise me that an invention like this exists. As the article states, I can imagine the miners responsible for this duty became attached to the birds (especially after they had a way to keep it alive). There's a detail that got lost in the shuffle there, though. While it had been possible to detect CO presence since -- I think -- the 20s or 30s, they didn't become common until the 80s. My Dad used to fly a private plane across the country selling CO detection solutions provided by his company to factories and businesses until the late 80s (from a little company in Ann Arbor, MI). Of course, come the mid-90s, most of us had devices that could detect presence and (to a lesser degree) levels in our homes.
- ClarityJones 4y agoThe symbolism is important too. If the company is dedicated to reviving the canary, then that helps miners believe that the company also cares about their lives and will work to rescue them in case of a disaster. If they don't care about the death of the canary in the coal mine...
- bee_rider 4y agoHuh, so the physical canary in the coal mine is also a metaphorical “canary in the coal mine” with respect to the company’s level of prudence. Is there a word for something which is analogy for itself?
- MichaelZuo 4y agoA recursive analogy? Though a quick verbatim google search reveals no precedent in linguistics... so I may have just invented that one.
- bobkazamakis 4y agoor they don't use the word recursive to describe two meanings, rather than recursion.
- laserdancepony 4y agoSite doesn't even load for me. The blogs are getting more bloated by the minute.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoI'm guessing that it does not like my ad/script blocking. I just get a blank page. Guess they didn't need me over there.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoIt seems to come from a good place, but what a torturous life for the canary. Hopefully they let the birds retire at some point?
- lostlogin 4y agoThis seems optimistic. Have you heard of pit ponies? Many lived a life without seeing light. This isn’t ancient history either - the last one in the UK died in 2011 and there were working pit ponies in the 1990s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_pony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_pony
- teddyh 4y agoModern equivalents: https://web.archive.org/web/20140607102015/http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2014/06/bizarre-secret-london-s-buried-diggers https://web.archive.org/web/20140607102015/http://www.newsta...
- AndrewOMartin 4y agoPoor Old Chuggy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSqG7eU5Np8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSqG7eU5Np8
- pitponyman 4y agoOoops The Last Pit Pony named Spike still lives at the Pit Pony Sanctuary in Pontypridd Wales UK. Last pit pony working was in Pantygasseg Colliery still working in October 1999, www.pitponies.co.uk
- pitponyman 4y agoPit Pony Spike still lives at the Pit Pony Sanctuary, Pontypridd, Wales UK. www.pitponies.co.uk Last working Pit Ponies I knew were at Pantygasseg Colliery still working in October 1999.
- throwaway987234 4y ago[dead]
- eCa 4y ago> the advent of electronic sensors in the mid-1980s We used actual canaries into the 80s? That’s a few decades later than I would have guessed...
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- Lukasmacner 4y agoThat's some cyberpunk contraption!
- dokem 4y agoI like how people in here think that someone who just spent 12 hours digging coal out of hell has enough energy left over to give even half of a shit about some bird. You think they went on a strike until the company invented this thing? Saving the birds was not a thing LOL
- dcminter 4y ago> "He concluded the explosion was caused by a build-up of carbon monoxide" Surely that can't be correct? Typo for methane? Edit: Per BBC article, right gas, wrong association! The explosion was caused by methane, and Haldane identified carbon monoxide as a cause of some deaths. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-15965188 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-15965188
- sbierwagen 4y agoCarbon monoxide is flammable, and OSHA lists explosive limits for it, so apparently some mixtures can explode: https://www.osha.gov/chemicaldata/462 https://www.osha.gov/chemicaldata/462
- dcminter 4y agoHuh, TIL. Does seem to be the incorrect gas/context in the original article though (or at least the BBC article and the post are incompatible in that respect).
- sbierwagen 4y agoThese guys claim they found a coalbed methane deposit that was 6% carbon monoxide. If true, that would be rapidly fatal if it leaked into a mine. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Composition-and-calorific-value-of-coalbed-methane-in-different-regions_tbl1_339466180 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Composition-and-calorifi... The firedamp wikipedia article also names "the insidiously lethal afterdamp (carbon monoxide and other gases) which are produced following explosions of firedamp or coal dust." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firedamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firedamp
- luisapic 4y ago[dead]