When and how the lighthouses appeared, and how the Statue of Liberty is related to them

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Judging by the works of literature and cinema, they are mainly built so that there was a place for monstrous dramas and chilling encounters with the supernatural to play out. Not that it was not true - all kinds of things happened at the lighthouses. And they themselves took different guises: beacons-towers, beacons-ships, beacons-churches; and the statue on Liberty Island is holding a torch raised up in its hand for a reason.

Wonder of the World - Lighthouse of Alexandria - and other similar structures on the coast

Lighthouses are gradually becoming a thing of the past, but their history has many centuries of service for the benefit of mariners. As soon as a person began to make attempts to conquer the sea space, it became necessary to help ships navigate, find their way to the port in the dark or in inclement weather, bypass shoals and reefs. Bonfires, which were made on the coastal hills, became the prototypes of lighthouses in antiquity.

The most famous of the ancient lighthouses is Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the world. It was built in the 3rd century BC on the small island of Pharos in the Nile Delta, and reached a height of one hundred and twenty, and possibly more. Strong earthquakes between the 10th and 14th centuries destroyed the lighthouse, but the sea finally swallowed up the ruins only towards the end of the 15th century.

But the lighthouse called "Tower of Hercules" in the Spanish town of La Coruña has survived and is still in operation, despite the fact that it was built in the II century, under the Emperor Trajan. This lighthouse bears the title of the oldest of the approximately one and a half thousand lighthouses currently functioning.

In the Middle Ages, navigation was carried out mainly in the daytime, and only with the appearance of large port cities in the 13th century, the first lighthouses began to be built. They were wooden towers on the coast, on the hills. A fire was lit on the tower to send a signal to the ships. It was quite inconvenient, expensive - after all, they burned a tree, it was required to burn hundreds of kilograms of wood per night. Over time, they began to use coal, then oil. In the 19th century, light was obtained from kerosene lamps.

Lighthouses in Europe were built very slowly - so, by the end of the 17th century, there were only six of them on the coast of France.

Evolution and varieties of lighthouses

Crossing the English Channel, ships risked crashing near Cornwall, on the rocks of the Rocks Eddystone, and therefore there, right in the sea, in 1699, the first lighthouse of this kind was built - surrounded on all sides by water. It was an octagonal wooden tower, in the upper part of which there was a room with glass windows. The light signal was provided by burning candles, several dozen of them were lit.

The lighthouse survived its first winter, but several years later it was destroyed by a storm. Currently, the fourth version of the lighthouse operates at the Rocks Eddystone.

In those cases when a lighthouse at sea was necessary, but the great depth made its construction impossible, a special vessel was used - a floating lighthouse. It is often installed even now - away from the coastline, to mark the entrance to the port.

For centuries, one of the main problems in the construction of lighthouses has been to ensure that the light signal is strong enough so that ships can distinguish it from a distance of ten miles or more. The candles were not bright enough, as was the oil, which also smoked heavily. Argandov's lamp invented at the end of the 18th century, with a tube that ensured the complete combustion of combustible gases, gave a brighter light. To enhance it, they resorted to using reflectors and lenses, using polished copper plates and mirrors. So that the light signal could be distinguished from other light sources, it changed, “blinked”, this was provided by a clock mechanism that sets the lens in motion.

In 1820, the Fresnel lens was invented - with a complex stepped surface. Thin and lightweight, thanks to its special design, it can increase the brightness of the signal several times. With the beginning of the application of the new invention, the signal from the lighthouse became visible from a distance of up to twenty miles (32 kilometers). And the creation of gas-lit beacons made it possible to further increase the signal brightness.

How beacons empty: unexplained and natural cases

For centuries, the work of the lighthouse was provided by the caretaker, and most often by several, for them living rooms were arranged under the room where the light is on. Working at the lighthouse demanded attention and discipline - after all, its functioning was especially important in inclement weather, in a storm. Anything happened - some of the incidents formed the basis of local legends and served as plots for thrillers.

In December 1900, three caretakers disappeared without a trace from a lighthouse on the isle of Eileen More, Scotland. Arriving on the island, the chief caretaker found locked doors and gates, unmade beds and a clock that had stopped. The caretakers seemed to have evaporated, leaving their waterproof raincoats in place - despite the fact that the weather was inclement. Every square meter of the island was examined, but it was not possible to come to any unified version regarding this disappearance. They assumed an accident, and the intervention of otherworldly forces, and murder followed by suicide.

The lighthouse itself has become automated since 1971, and the island has become uninhabited. The same fate befell other modern lighthouses, which do not require the constant presence of a person, but only need preventive examination and repair.

A major step towards the automation of lighthouses was taken at the beginning of the 20th century. Swedish scientist Gustav Dahlen, by the way, who later received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention, designed a "solar valve" that turned on the light only at night and in cloudy weather. Thanks to the sun's rays, the black rod built into the transparent glass tube was heated and increased in length, and due to its pressure on the lever, the valve was closed, allowing the gas to pass through. When the rod was cooled, the lever was raised and the gas flow rushed forward, passing through the ignition device.

In the daytime, the lighthouse attracted attention with its color and shape. Sometimes she became not only noticeable, but unique. The American Statue of Liberty on an island in New York is also formally a lighthouse - it acquired this status in 1886. True, the signal light that was lit in the torch was not bright enough, for this reason the statue is not included in the official lists of lighthouses.

Twenty-first century technology has reduced the importance of lighthouses - there are significantly cheaper and more accurate ways to locate ships and dangerous sandbanks for navigation. This is one of the reasons that lighthouses lose their relevance and become inactive and then abandoned. In this case, their main purpose may become the storage of legends about ghosts living in ancient dilapidated towers.

One of the abandoned lighthouses is located either in Sweden or in Finland - it has become the subject of an unusual discussion, akin to the one who owns the rock in the Arctic.