Technical advances of the lighthouse

Firewood, charcoal even the oil extracted from the whale's semen was used to light lighthouses. The most important invention in the lighthouse's history is . a river of lights.

 

Underground sand strips near the river mouth are always dangerous for ships to travel. Therefore, boats with such indicator lights are necessary. The first ships were operating at the coast in the Netherlands in the 15th century. But the most famous was a ship-lighthouse anchored at the mouth of the River Thames in 1732 and then a fleet of lights with lights arranged along the coast of England during the 1780s.

 

Since the beginning of the 19th century, people have created focusing lenses in order to focus more strongly than the amount of light emitted. These large lenses add concentric circular grooves around a small lens in the middle. This structure makes the mirror lighter but still can amplify the amount of light up to 4 times that of a classical reflector.

 

Between 1763 and 1777, William Hutchinson, as head of the Liverpool Port Authority, installed the first lighthouses with parabolic mirrors that reflected light. These mirrors were built according to the principle of French scientist Lavoisier, the light source can be strongly focused on a point thanks to a concave mirror. By 1780, two French engineers Teulère and Lenoir had studied parabolic mirrors made of copper coated with silver.

 

In the early 1960s, plastic buoys and glass fibers were produced. They are very light. Signal lights on these buoys were also powered by solar cells and also from wind power. By the 1970s, new generation buoys were equipped with compact fluorescent lamps.

 

The lighthouses were built of wood and lit with oil with bent steel reflectors installed in Sweden in the years 1669 and 1685. The lighthouse has the disadvantage of being burnt. black 'because fuel is oil burned inside, making the signal's brightness not clear.

 

The idea of ​​using coal as a fuel for marine lights was proposed by a British lighthouse architect, John Smeaton. This simple system produced very good glowing signals and existed until the 19th century.

 

A set of lens mirrors weighs up to 5 tons and is designed to spin on roller bearings. The rotation of the lens is controlled according to the mechanical mechanism of the clock. But the rotation speed of this lighthouse lamp is quite slow.

 

The lighthouse was installed in Chassiron (France) in 1825 and improved the lens element. This is a lens with a vertical round tube, the inside is fitted with many round prisms to focus the received light on the center of the circle.

 

For the type of vessel that is a lighthouse, it is important to keep the light source always in a fixed position when the ship sways up and down the water. In 1915 Dalen, a Swedish engineer, overcame this situation when he created a "lighthouse lighthouse". The lens system is placed on a balanced oscillator. This will help the light source always maintain a stable position on the hull.

 

When iron materials were commonly used in construction at a low installation cost, in England in 1840, a lighthouse was built with 9 iron pillars supported, right on a strip of sand at the river mouth. Thames. By the 1850s, there were more than 10 signs posted in Britain and the United States.

 

In the 1960s, the United States designed a modern remote control buoy complex, even from a very deep ground station. This buoy system is named LANBY, is structured as a floating frame shaped like a large round disc, on which is equipped with a tall tower that emits strong light signals, which can be seen from the distance. more than 20 knots.

 

A simple and inexpensive maintenance lighthouse was erected near the coast of Pembrokeshire (England) in 1776. The lighthouse was placed on an oak column.

 

The 21st century will see the birth of lighthouses with 'strong' but 'very elegant' but also 'elegant'. These lighthouses will be made of steel, concrete and plastic that have been strengthened with glass fibers. They will be powered by solar energy from solar panels and will be programmed fully automatically.

 

When the lighthouses were automated, the final problem was how to make the technical team able to access them most quickly when inspecting, maintaining periodically or when the lighthouse encountered a problem. The 20th century saw the birth of 'hats' lighthouses, ie a helipad above. This model was first tested in Sweden in 1970 and then applied in many parts of the world.

As early as the 17th century, the maritime industry found it necessary to equip more lighthouses, since sea trade at that time began to flourish. However, people were also aware of the technical limitations and performance of lighthouses at the time.

People have spent a lot of effort to maintain them and a large amount of firewood to maintain these glowing signals. And an urgent need is to find ways to control those sources of light. Also from that day, the great progress of science has gradually helped people modernize those sea lamps, until today and forever .

Light sources from the 17th-19th century

After firewood, people were able to use coal to light lighthouses, to maintain a stronger source of light. Over time, people have discovered that coal and firewood are also ineffective.

Since then, people have started to use oil. However, this type of fuel has the disadvantage of discharging too much black dust and smoke on the glass layers of the sea lamp, causing the light to be weakened and the maintenance to be cleaned harder. Therefore, the use of oil lamps was only popular in the 17th century.

By the middle of the 19th century, people thought of crude oils or refined oils from plants such as colza (colza) and animals. In particular, the oil extracted from the sperm of the whale. But these types of fuels are quite expensive.

Later, cheaper products can be used and can be extracted on the spot such as tarps, olive oil, vegetable oils from nuts, and oils derived from fish and fat. whale. In general, the lighting materials for the lighthouses of the previous centuries were very diverse.

In terms of construction techniques, people were able to erect wooden lighthouse towers. But this 'marine soldier' ​​proved to suffer less from storms than his "elder", which was made of stone.

On the other hand, because ships with large loads travel more and more, the maritime circles need to build lighthouses on the beach rocks at sea, not far from the mainland. These lighthouse structures must withstand more severe weather conditions. And a British lighthouse architect has come up with a number of new innovations that have long been applied. It was John Smeaton.

In 1759, John was the first to use a mixture of mortar mixed with iron to harden the walls of the lighthouses. It is just a basic method of making a material that we now call 'reinforced concrete'. So, for the first time since Roman times, people know how to use 'cement' that can freeze when exposed to water to build lighthouses.

The invention made the lighthouse change

At the beginning of the 19th century, there were many long sea voyages by steam engines, running fast and not depending much on wind and tide. The urgent need was to have more powerful lighthouses so that 'people of the sea' could see them from a very remote location.

Countries with developed maritime industries have begun to build more lighthouses along their shores. At the same time, it is also necessary to improve the features of sea buoys, so that they can be recognized even at night.

Because of these needs, we have all kinds of floats equipped with bells born in the 60s of the 19th century. After a few decades, there were more types of self-luminous buoys thanks to entering a gas tank can help the buoy operate for about 1 month.

But the most important invention at that time was probably the birth of a river-lighting lamp. This type of lamp operates according to the principle of evaporation of the fuel that is burned inside, usually light oil, by transmitting an appropriate pressure and temperature on the tubes installed above the blister layer. As a result, the light-emitting lamps can "heat up" themselves and glow 6 times more powerful than previous oil lamps, and consume much less fuel.

After that, there were more electric ball lamps that helped increase the luminous intensity 10 times more than the previous generation lamps. In the period before World War II, many marine lamps had a new equipment, powered by power from diesel-powered generators. According to the operational principle, the lighthouse is equipped with electric lights with an additional reserve of gas, along with a signaling system dedicated to the foggy weather and radio transceivers.

Nguyen Cao ( According to Phares Du Monde Entier )