Artificial Light: Its Influence upon CivilizationLuckiesh, Matthew
History
Artificial Light: Its Influence upon Civilization
Luckiesh, Matthew
Electric lighting; Lighting -- History
The earliest lighthouses were equipped with braziers or grates in which
coal or wood was burned. These crude light-sources were used until after
the advent of the nineteenth century and in one case until 1846. In the
famous Eddystone tower off Plymouth, England, candles were used for the
first time. The first Eddystone tower was completed in 1698, but it was
swept away in 1703. Another was built and destroyed by fire in 1755.
Smeaton then built another in 1759. Inasmuch as Smeaton is credited with
having introduced the use of candles, this must have occurred in the
eighteenth century; still it appears that, as we have said, the Boston
Light, built in 1716, used oil-lamps from its beginning. However,
Smeaton installed twenty-four candles of rather large size each credited
with an intensity of 2.8 candles. The total luminous intensity of the
light-source in this tower was about 67 candles. Inasmuch as this was
before the use of efficient reflectors and lenses, it is obvious that
the early lighthouses were rather feeble beacons.
According to British records, oil-lamps with flat wicks were first used
in the Liverpool lighthouses in 1763. The Argand lamp, introduced in
about 1784, became widely used. The better combustion obtained with this
lamp having a cylindrical wick and a glass chimney greatly increased the
luminous intensity and general satisfactoriness of the oil-lamp. Later
Lange added an improvement by providing a contraction toward the upper
part of the chimney. Rumford and also Fresnel devised multiple-wick
burners, thus increasing the luminous intensity. In these early lamps
sperm-oil and colza-oil were burned and they continued to be until the
middle of the nineteenth century. Cocoanut-oil, lard-oil, and olive-oil
have also been used in lighthouses.
Naturally, mineral oil was introduced as soon as it was available, owing
to its lower cost; but it was not until nearly 1870 that a satisfactory
mineral-oil lamp was in operation in lighthouses. Doty is credited with
the invention of the first successful multiple-wick lighthouse lamp
using mineral oil, and his lamp and modifications of it were very
generally used until the latter part of the nineteenth century. These
lamps are of two types--one in which oil is supplied to the burner under
pressure and the other in which oil is maintained at a constant level.
In some of the smallest lamps the ordinary capillarity of the wick is
depended on to supply oil to the flame.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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