Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829), was a British chemist and inventor. He created the Davy lamp and an early version of an arc lamp. He also used electricity to isolate several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807, and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium, and boron the following year. He discovered that chlorine and iodine are elements. Davy studied the forces involved in these discoveries, creating the field of electrochemistry. He is credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.

In 1799, Davy experimented with nitrous oxide and found it made him laugh. He called it "laughing gas" and wrote about its possible use as an anesthetic to reduce pain during surgery. Davy held the title of baronet, was President of the Royal Society (PRS), a member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), a founder member and Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture, "On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity," "one of the best papers that ever helped develop chemistry theory."

Early life: 1778–1798

Davy was born on December 17, 1778, in Penzance, Cornwall, England. He was the oldest of five children born to Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife, Grace Millett. His brother, John Davy, a chemist, described their hometown as a place where people often believed in supernatural and unusual things. He also noted that many people in the middle and upper classes had little interest in books or science and instead enjoyed activities like hunting, shooting, and wrestling, often ending up drunk.

At age six, Davy attended grammar school in Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan. During the school term, Davy lived with John Tonkin, his godfather and later guardian. After finishing grammar school in 1793, Tonkin paid for Davy to attend Truro Grammar School, where he studied under Rev. Dr. Cardew. In a letter to Davies Giddy (later called Davies Gilbert), Dr. Cardew wrote that he could not see the talents that would later make Davy famous. At school, Davy wrote poetry, composed love poems called Valentines, and told stories from One Thousand and One Nights. In a letter to his mother, he wrote, "Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain." He also said, "I consider it fortunate I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study… What I am I made myself." His brother said Davy had "native vigour" and "the genuine quality of genius, or of that power of intellect which exalts its possessor above the crowd."

In 1794, after Davy’s father died, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon in Penzance. While working as an apprentice, Davy began doing experiments at home, which sometimes annoyed his family and friends. His older sister complained that his corrosive chemicals were ruining her dresses, and one friend joked that Davy might "blow us all into the air."

In 1797, after learning French from a refugee priest, Davy read Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie. This book influenced his future work, which can be seen as a response to Lavoisier’s ideas and the dominance of French chemists.

As a poet, Davy wrote over 160 poems, most of which are in his personal notebooks. Most of these poems were not published, and he shared only a few with friends. Eight of his poems were published. His poems reflected his thoughts on his career and aspects of life, such as death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology, and chemistry. John Ayrton Paris said that the young Davy’s poems showed "lofty genius." His first known poem, "The Sons of Genius," dates to 1795 and shows the immaturity of youth. Later poems, like "On the Mount’s Bay" and "St Michael’s Mount," are descriptive verses.

Although he initially wrote poems to express his views on his career and life, his later poems focused more on themes of immortality and death. This shift happened after he began experiencing health problems and a decline in his career.

Three of Davy’s paintings from around 1796 were donated to the Penlee House museum in Penzance. One painting shows the view from above Gulval, including the church, Mount’s Bay, and the Mount. The other two paintings depict Loch Lomond in Scotland.

At age 17, Davy discussed the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor, Robert Dunkin. Dunkin said, "I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life." One winter day, Dunkin took Davy to the Lariggan River to show him that rubbing two ice plates together created enough energy to melt them. When the motion stopped, the ice pieces joined together through a process called regelation. Davy later used a similar experiment in his lectures at the Royal Institution, which drew attention. As a professor there, Davy repeated many of the experiments he learned from Dunkin.

Early career: 1798–1802

Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance, where Davy was swinging carelessly on the half-gate of Dr. Borlase's house. Interested in Davy's conversation, Giddy invited him to his home in Tredrea and offered him use of his library. This led to Davy meeting Dr. Edwards, who lived at Hayle Copper House. Edwards was a chemistry teacher at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He allowed Davy to use his laboratory and may have drawn his attention to the floodgates of the port of Hayle in Cornwall, which were decaying quickly because of the reaction between copper and iron in seawater. At that time, scientists did not understand galvanic corrosion, but this experience helped prepare Davy for later experiments on copper sheathing for ships. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, visited Penzance for health reasons. While staying at the Davys' home, he became a friend of Davy and taught him chemistry. Davy also met the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter in Penzance.

At this time, Thomas Beddoes, a doctor and writer, and John Hailstone, a geologist, were arguing about two theories about Earth's formation: the Plutonian and Neptunist hypotheses. They traveled together to study the Cornish coast, accompanied by Giddy, who was a close friend of Beddoes, and met Davy. Beddoes had created a medical research center in Bristol called the "Pneumatic Institution" and needed an assistant to manage the laboratory. Giddy recommended Davy, and in 1798, Gregory Watt showed Beddoes Davy's book, Young Man's Researches on Heat and Light, which was later published in the first volume of West-Country Contributions. After long discussions, Mrs. Davy and Borlase agreed to let Davy leave. Tonkin wanted Davy to stay in his hometown as a surgeon and changed his will when Davy insisted on joining Dr. Beddoes.

On October 2, 1798, Davy joined the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. The institution studied the medical effects of artificial gases, and Davy was responsible for managing experiments. The agreement between Beddoes and Davy was generous, allowing Davy to give up his claim to his father's property in favor of his mother. Although Davy intended to continue his medical studies and graduate in Edinburgh, he soon filled the institution with voltaic batteries. While living in Bristol, Davy met the Earl of Durham, who stayed at the institution for health reasons.

Davy worked hard in the laboratory and formed a long, close friendship with Mrs. Anna Beddoes, the sister of novelist Maria Edgeworth. Anna guided Davy on walks and showed him sights in the area. Critic Maurice Hindle was the first to note that Davy and Anna wrote poems for each other. Wahida Amin has recorded and analyzed several poems written between 1803 and 1808 to "Anna" and one to her child.

In 1799, the first volume of West-Country Collections was published. It included Davy's essays on heat, light, and the combinations of light, as well as on phos-oxygen and the theory of respiration. On February 22, 1799, Davy wrote to Giddy, "I am now as certain that caloric does not exist as I am that light does."

In 1799, Davy became well known for his experiments with gases, including laughing gas (nitrous oxide). This gas was first made in 1772 by Joseph Priestley, who called it "dephlogisticated nitrous air." Priestley described his discovery in his book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775), explaining how to create "nitrous air diminished" by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid. In a letter to Giddy on April 10, 1799, Davy wrote, "I made a discovery yesterday that shows how important it is to repeat experiments. Pure nitrous oxide gas is safe to breathe, but it becomes harmful when mixed with nitrous gas. I found a way to make it pure." He inhaled sixteen quarts of it for nearly seven minutes and said it "absolutely intoxicated me."

Davy's experiments involved not only himself but also his friends, including poets Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Gregory Watt and James Watt. James Watt built a portable gas chamber to help Davy test nitrous oxide. At one point, the gas was mixed with wine to test its ability to cure hangovers (his notes suggested it worked). The gas was popular among Davy's friends, and he noted it might help in surgery. Anesthetics were not widely used in medicine or dentistry until many years after Davy's death.

Davy faced serious risks during his gas experiments. Breathing nitric oxide may have caused nitric acid to form in his mouth, seriously injuring his mucous membranes. In another experiment, he inhaled four quarts of "pure hydrocarbonate" gas (carbon monoxide) and "seemed sinking into annihilation." When taken outside, he faintly said, "I do not think I shall die," but hours passed before his symptoms stopped. Davy described his pulse as "threadlike and beating with excessive quickness" as he staggered into the garden.

In 1799, Beddoes and Davy published Contributions to physical and medical knowledge, principally from the west of England and Essays on heat, light, and the combinations of light, with a new theory of respiration. Their work was poorly received and criticized harshly. Later, Davy regretted publishing these early, untested ideas, calling them "the dreams of misemployed genius." However, these criticisms pushed Davy to improve his experimental methods, which he focused on more in his later time at the institution.

In December 1799, Davy visited London for the first time, expanding his circle of friends. He is mentioned in the diary of William Godwin, with their first meeting recorded on December 4, 1799.

In 1800, Davy told Giddy he had successfully repeated "galvanic experiments" during his gas research, which "almost incessantly occupied him from January to April." That year, Davy published Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration and received more positive feedback.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge moved to the Lake District in 1800 and asked Davy to handle the Bristol publishers of Lyrical Ballads, Biggs & Cottle. Coleridge asked Davy to proofread the second edition of the book, which included Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads." In a letter dated July 16, 1800, Coleridge wrote, "Will you be so kind as just to look over the sheets of the

Mid-career: 1802–1820

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In June 1802, Davy published in the first issue of the Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain his "An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver." Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With Observations by H. Davy, in which he described their experiments with the photosensitivity of silver nitrate.

He recorded that "images of small objects, produced by means of the solar microscope, may be copied without difficulty on prepared paper." Josef Maria Eder, in his History of Photography, though crediting Wedgwood, because of his application of this quality of silver nitrate to the making of images, as "the first photographer in the world," proposes that it was Davy who realized the idea of photographic enlargement using a solar microscope to project images onto sensitized paper. Neither found a means of fixing their images, and Davy devoted no more of his time to furthering these early discoveries in photography.

The principle of image projection using solar illumination was applied to the construction of the earliest form of photographic enlarger, the "solar camera."

Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Davy discovered potassium in 1807, deriving it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction had been made between potassium and sodium. Potassium was the first metal that was isolated by electrolysis. Davy isolated sodium in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide.

During the first half of 1808, Davy conducted a series of further electrolysis experiments on alkaline earths including lime, magnesia, strontites and barytes. At the beginning of June, Davy received a letter from the Swedish chemist Berzelius claiming that he, in conjunction with Dr. Pontin, had successfully obtained amalgams of calcium and barium by electrolysing lime and barytes using a mercury cathode. Davy managed to successfully repeat these experiments almost immediately and expanded Berzelius' method to strontites and magnesia. He noted that while these amalgams oxidized in only a few minutes when exposed to air they could be preserved for lengthy periods of time when submerged in naphtha before becoming covered with a white crust.

On 30 June 1808, Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals which he named barium, calcium, strontium and magnium (later changed to magnesium) which were subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions. Although Davy conceded magnium was an "undoubtedly objectionable" name he argued the more appropriate name magnesium was already being applied to metallic manganese and wished to avoid creating an equivocal term. The observations gathered from these experiments also led to Davy isolating boron in 1809. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."

Davy performed a number of experiments aimed to isolate the metal aluminium and is credited as the person who named the element. The first name proposed for the metal to be isolated from alum was alumium, which Davy suggested in an 1808 article on his electrochemical research, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. It appeared that the name was created from the English word alum and the Latin suffix -ium; but it was customary then to give elements names originating in Latin, so this name was not adopted universally. This name was criticized by contemporary chemists from France, Germany, and Sweden, who insisted the metal should be named for the oxide, alumina, from which it would be isolated. The English name alum does not come directly from Latin, whereas alumine / alumina comes from the Latin word alumen (upon declension, alumen changes to alumin-). The form aluminium, the modern preferred British word, was proposed by January 1811 in an account of Davy's published experiments written by William Hyde Wollaston. Davy later used aluminum (by 1812), which remains the U.S. word.

Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who called it "dephlogisticated marine acid" (see phlogiston theory) and mistakenly thought it contained oxygen. Davy showed that the acid of Scheele's substance, called at the time oxymuriatic acid, contained no oxygen. This discovery overturned Lavoisier's definition of acids as compounds of oxygen. In 1810, chlorine was given its current name by Humphry Davy, who insisted that chlorine was in fact an element. The name chlorine, chosen by Davy for "one of [the substance's] obvious and characteristic properties – its colour", comes from the Greek χλωρος (chlōros), meaning green-yellow.

Davy seriously injured himself in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride. French chemist Pierre Louis Dulong had first prepared this compound in 1811, and had lost two fingers and an eye in two separate explosions with it. In a letter to John Children, on 16 November 1812, Davy wrote: "It must be used with great caution. It is not safe to experiment upon a globule larger than a pin's head. I have been severely wounded by a piece scarcely bigger. My sight, however, I am informed, will not be injured". Davy's accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a co-worker, particularly for assistance with handwriting and record keeping. They were both injured in another NCl3 explosion shortly thereafter. He had recovered from his injuries by April 1813.

In 1812, Davy was knighted and gave up his lecturing position at the Royal Institution. He was given the title of Honorary Professor of Chemistry. He gave a farewell lecture to the Institution, and married a wealthy widow, Jane Apreece. (While Davy was generally acknowledged as being faithful to his wife, their relationship was stormy, and in later years he travelled to continental Europe alone.)

Davy then published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, part 1, volume 1, though other parts of this title were never completed. He made notes for a second edition, but it was never required. In October 1813, he and his wife, accompanied by Michael Faraday as his scientific assistant (also treated as a valet), travelled to France to collect the second edition of the prix du Galvanisme, a medal that Napoleon Bonaparte had awarded Davy for his electro-chemical work. Faraday noted "Tis indeed a strange venture at this time, to trust ourselves in a foreign and hostile country, where so little regard is had to protestations of honour, that the slightest suspicion would be sufficient to separate us for ever from England, and perhaps from life". Davy's party sailed from Plymouth to Morlaix by cartel, where they were searched.

Upon reaching Paris, Davy was a guest of honour at a meeting of the First Class of the Institut de France and met with André-Marie Ampère and other French chemists. It was later reported that Davy's wife had thrown the medal into the sea, near her Cornish home, "as it raised bad memories". The Royal Society of Chemistry has offered over £1,800 for the recovery of the medal.

While in Paris, Davy attended lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique, including those by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac on a mysterious substance isolated by Bernard Courtois. Davy wrote a paper for the Royal Society on the element, which is now called iodine. This led to a dispute between Davy and Gay-Lussac on who had the priority on the research.

Davy's party did not meet Napoleon in person, but they did visit the Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais at the Château de Malmaison. The party left Paris in December 1813, travelling south to Italy. They so

Later life: 1820–1829

On October 20, 1818, Davy was given the title of baronet, which was the first such honor given to a scientist in Britain. A year later, he became president of the Royal Society. At that time, the Society was changing from a group of wealthy people interested in natural philosophy to an organization focused on specialized scientific fields. The previous president, Joseph Banks, had led the Society for over 40 years and ruled it with strong control. Banks had chosen Davies Gilbert to take over and keep things the same, but Gilbert refused. Some members of the Society thought royal support was important and suggested Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (later Leopold I of Belgium) and Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset, as possible replacements. Both declined. Davy was the most respected scientist, but some members did not like his work at the Royal Institution.

Elections for the Royal Society presidency happened on St. Andrew’s Day, and Davy was chosen on November 30, 1820. He had no opponents, but other candidates had received early support. These candidates showed the challenges Davy faced during his presidency, which eventually led to his removal. The strongest competitor was William Hyde Wollaston, who was backed by a group of mathematicians, including Charles Babbage and John Herschel. They wanted to stop Davy because they believed he did not support young scientists in fields like mathematics, astronomy, and geology enough. Davy was only 41, and some feared he might have a long presidency like Banks.

In his early years, Davy hoped to bring together different groups within the Royal Society. In his first speech as president, he said, “I trust that, with these new societies, we shall always preserve the most amicable relations… I am sure there is no desire in [the Royal Society] to exert anything like patriarchal authority in relation to these institutions.”

Starting in 1761, copper plating was added to the undersides of Royal Navy ships to protect them from shipworms. However, the copper was damaged over time by saltwater. Between 1823 and 1825, Davy, with help from Michael Faraday, tried to protect the copper using electrochemical methods. He attached zinc or iron to the copper, which helped prevent corrosion. However, the protected copper became covered with seaweed and marine life, which made the ships harder to handle.

The Navy Board asked Davy for help with the corrosion problem in 1823. Davy tested his ideas in Portsmouth Dockyard, and the Navy Board began using his “protectors.” By 1824, most ships with protected copper bottoms had become fouled with marine life. By the end of 1825, the Admiralty ordered the Navy Board to stop using the protectors and remove them from ships. Davy’s plan was seen as a failure, even though it worked to stop corrosion. As Frank A. J. L. James explained, “Because the poisonous salts from corroding copper were no longer entering the water, there was nothing to kill the barnacles and the like near a ship. This meant that barnacles could attach themselves to the bottom of a vessel, which made it harder to steer, angering ship captains.”

Davy struggled to manage conflicts within the Royal Society. His reputation suffered after failures like his research on copper-bottomed ships. This was made worse by political mistakes. In 1825, he promoted the new Zoological Society, which upset expert zoologists. He also failed to ensure that Charles Babbage received a Royal Medal or a position in the Society in 1826. In 1826, Davy had a stroke and never fully recovered. In November 1826, Edward Ryan, a mathematician, wrote that “The Society, every member almost… are in the greatest rage at the President’s proceedings and nothing is now talked of but removing him.”

Davy was re-elected president unopposed, but he was clearly unwell. In January 1827, he traveled to Italy for his health, but it did not improve. As the 1827 election approached, it was clear he would not run again. He was succeeded by Davies Gilbert.

Davy’s assistant, Michael Faraday, continued and expanded on Davy’s work, becoming a more famous scientist. Davy once said Faraday was his greatest discovery. However, Davy later accused Faraday of copying his work, which caused Faraday to stop researching electromagnetism until Davy’s death.

According to Geoffrey Cantor’s 1991 biography of Faraday, Davy’s accusation of plagiarism in 1821 was an attempt to control Faraday after the young scientist’s success. This event marked a turning point in their relationship. Other sources suggest the phrase “Davy’s greatest discovery was Faraday” was a joke at Davy’s expense, not a compliment from him.

Davy was described as cheerful but easily annoyed. He was very enthusiastic and energetic in his work. He was a deist, meaning he believed in a higher power but not in organized religion. His writing and speeches showed a creative mind. Poet Coleridge said if Davy had not been a chemist, he might have been a great poet. Despite his awkward appearance, Davy’s clear explanations and lively experiments made him a popular lecturer. Coleridge attended his lectures to gather ideas for his poetry. Davy’s main goal was to gain fame, but he also cared about helping people, as seen in his invention of the miners’ lamp. He was not concerned with social rules, and his honesty sometimes caused problems.

In his final months, Davy wrote Consolations in Travel, a popular book mixing poetry, science, and philosophy. Published after his death, it was widely read. He spent the winter in Rome, hunting in the Campagna on his 50th birthday. On February 20, 1829, he had another stroke. After months of trying to recover, Davy died in a room at L’Hôtel de la Couronne, in the Rue du Rhône, in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 29, 1829.

Honours

• Shortly after his funeral, his wife arranged for a memorial plaque to be placed in Westminster Abbey, costing £142.
• In 1872, a statue of Davy was placed in front of the Market Building in Penzance (now owned by Lloyds TSB) at the top of Market Jew Street.
• A slate plaque on 4 Market Jew Street, Penzance, states that the location is where Davy was born. A secondary school on Coombe Road, Penzance, is named Humphry Davy School.
• A pub at 32 Alverton Street, Penzance, is named "The Sir Humphry Davy."
• One of the science buildings at the University of Plymouth is called The Davy Building.
• A road named Humphry Davy Way is located near the docks in Bristol.
• Outside the entrance to Sunderland Football Club’s Stadium of Light, a large Davy Lamp stands to honor local mining history and the importance of Davy’s safety lamp in the mining industry.
• A street named Humphry-Davy-Straße is located in the industrial area of Cuxhaven, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
• A satellite campus of the University of Sheffield at Golden Smithies Lane in Wath upon Dearne (Manvers) was called Humphry Davy House and housed the School of Nursing and Midwifery until April 2009.
• Davy Sound in Greenland was named in his honor by William Scoresby (1789–1857).
• A commercial area called "zone of activity" in La Grand-Combe, Gard, France—a former mining town—is named after Davy.
• Mount Davy in New Zealand’s Paparoa Range was named after him by Julius von Haast.

• In 1827, the mineral davyne was named in his honor by W. Haidinger.
• Since 1877, the Royal Society of London has awarded the Davy Medal to recognize an important recent discovery in any area of chemistry.
• The Davy lunar crater is named after him. It is 34 kilometers wide and located at coordinates 11.8S, 8.1W.
• Davy’s love for fly-fishing earned him the nickname "the father of modern fly-fishing." His book Salmonia is often called "the fly-fisherman bible."
• The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said he attended Davy’s lectures to gain more metaphors for his writing.

In popular culture

• Davy is the subject of a humorous song by Richard Gendall. The song was recorded in 1980 by folk-singer Brenda Wootton on the album Boy Jan Cornishman. The seven verses of the song each describe a day of the week on which Davy supposedly made a specific discovery.

• English playwright Nick Darke wrote a comedy script titled Laughing Gas (2005) about the life of Sir Humphry Davy. The script was unfinished when Nick Darke died. It was later completed by actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by a Truro-based production company called O-region.

• Edmund Clerihew Bentley’s first clerihew, published in 1905, was written about Sir Humphry Davy.

• A humorous rhyme of unknown origin exists about the statue of Davy in Penzance.

• In his 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne mentions Davy’s geological theories.

Publications

For a complete list of Davy's articles, refer to Fullmer's work.

Humphry Davy's books include the following:

• — (1800). Researches, Chemical and Philosophical; Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and Its Respiration. Bristol: Biggs and Cottle. p. 1. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
• — (1812). Elements of Chemical Philosophy. London: Johnson and Co. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-217-88947-6. {{ cite book }}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
• — (1813). Elements of Agricultural Chemistry in a Course of Lectures. London: Longman.
• — (1816). The Papers of Sir H. Davy. Newcastle: Emerson Charnley. (on Davy's safety lamp)
• — (1827). Discourses to the Royal Society. London: John Murray.
• — (1828). Salmonia or Days of Fly Fishing. London: John Murray. p. 13.
• — (1830). Consolations in Travel or The Last Days of a Philosopher. London: John Murray. p. 1.

Davy also wrote articles about chemistry for Rees's Cyclopædia, but the specific topics are not recorded.

His collected works were published between 1839 and 1840:

• Davy, John (1839–1840). The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy. London: Smith, Elder, and Company. ISBN 978-0-217-88944-5. {{ cite book }}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)