The French and British investigators, however, were not having things entirely their own way. The United States played a part in these developments, although they did not enter very successfully into the problem. The first lighthouse at Boston Harbour carried candles until superseded by an ordinary lamp, which was hung in the lantern in much the same way as it might have been suspended behind the window of a private dwelling. An inventor, Mr. Winslow Lewis, who confessed that he knew nothing about lighthouse optics, patented what he called a “magnifying and reflecting lantern” for lighthouse work, which he claimed was a lamp, a reflector, and a magnifier, all in one. It was as crude a device as has ever emanated from an inventive brain, but the designer succeeded in impressing the Government so effectively that they gave him £4,000, or $20,000, for his invention. The reflector was wrought of thin copper with a silvered surface, while the magnifier, the essence of the invention, was what he called a “lens,” but which in reality comprised only a circular transparent mass, 9 inches in diameter, and varying from 2½ to 4 inches in thickness, made of bottle-green glass. The Government considered that it had acquired a valuable invention, and was somewhat dismayed by the blunt opinion of one of its inspectors who held contrary views concerning the magnifier, inasmuch as he reported cynically that its only merit was that it made “a bad light worse.” [Illustration: FIG. 7.--DOUBLE FLASHING APPARATUS: TWO PANELS AND MIRROR. (_By permission of Messrs. Chance Bros. and Co., Ltd._)] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--DOUBLE FLASHING APPARATUS: TWO GROUPS EACH OF TWO PANELS. (_By permission of Messrs. Chance Bros. and Co., Ltd._)]