lighthouse

An aid for navigation and pilotage at sea, a lighthouse is a tower building or framework sending out light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire. more...

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Lighthouses also provide coordinate location for small aircraft traveling at night. More primitive navigational aids were once used such as a fire on top of a hill or cliff (see beacon).

Because of modern navigational aids, the number of operational lighthouses has declined to less than 1,500 worldwide. Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals away from the coast, and safe entries to harbors.

Perhaps the most famous lighthouse in history is the Lighthouse of Alexandria, built on the island of Pharos in ancient Egypt. The name of the island is still used as the noun for \"lighthouse\" in some languages, for example:Albanian (far), French (phare), Italian and Spanish (faro), Portuguese (farol), Romanian (far), Bulgarian and Russian (фар), and Greek (φάρος). The word \"pharology\" (study of the lighthouses) is also derived from the island's name.

History

Lighthouses originally contained an open fire. Later, they were gas-powered and electric.

Ancient

The Lighthouse of Alexandria was a tower built in the 3rd century BC (between 285 and 247 BC) on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to serve as that port's landmark, and later, its lighthouse. With a height variously estimated at between 115 and 135 metres (383 - 440 ft) it was among the tallest man-made structures on Earth for many centuries, and was identified as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by classical writers. Two lighthouses, each called the Pharos, were built at Dover soon after the Norman conquest of England. They were sited on the two heights (Eastern Heights and Western Heights) and modelled on the one built for Caligula's aborted invasion at Boulogne.

In the Islamic world, lighthouses were also known. The Tang Dynasty Chinese writer Jia Dan once wrote in his book (written between 785 - 805) that in the sea route forming the opening mouth of the Persian Gulf, the medieval Iranians had erected large minaret towers that served as lighthouses. Confirming the Chinese reports, a century later, the Arab writers al-Mas'udi and al-Muqaddasi wrote of the same lighthouses.

In China, the medieval mosque at Canton had a minaret that served as a lighthouse. The later Song Dynasty Chinese pagoda tower built in medieval Hangzhou, known as the Liuhe Pagoda (erected in 1165), also served as a lighthouse for sailers along the Qiantang River.

Modern

From the 1900s Carbide lamps were introduced. In 1907 Nils Gustaf Dalén produced the sun valve which turned the beacon on and off using daylight. The first one was erected on Furuholmen’s lighthouse between Stockholm and Vaxholm. In 1912 Dalén was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of 'automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses'

Read more at Wikipedia.org