HIS LAMPS SHINE ON

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

HIS LAMPS SHINE ON

Gustaf Lost His But Not His Spirit

A MAN who gave the world a great light, but to whom tho " world was dark for 25 years, has passed away at Stockholm. He was Dr. Nils Gustaf Dalen, whose lamp is in thousands of lighthouses at sea and on thousands of buoys and airway beacons. He was the inventor of the AGA beacon sun-valve light, and was so distinguished an inventor that he won the Nobel pri/.e. He was 68, and had been inventing sinco he was a boy on his father's farm, where he invented a milking machine. Another of his domestic inventions was a cooking stow always ready wthout the need for turning Switches or taps, or lighting fires, or regulating heat. Beacons Everywhere He lost his sight while experimenting <in a gas accumulator; but even without his sight he was able to invent an automatic device for changing gas mantles in solitary coast lights. We see Dalen beacons everywhere. Without them much of the swift movement of the world to-day would be more difficult and less safe. Before .Dalen's invention men were planted in pairs on lonely and desolate spots, but the Dalen beacon needs no watchman. Guardships visit the light now and then to see that all is well and to change the cylinders. Lightships which needed 17 men are now replaced by a strong buoy which has a fresh cylinder slipped jjato place periodically and is then left

to itself. 2sot one of the lights has ever gone out. As these beacons became planted in the waterways of the world it became evident that it was wasteful to have them burning through the day, and to \oid this Dalen invented his sun-valve, which puts out the lights when daylight conies and lights them up again at sight. Self-Fixing Mantles Now another problem arose, for it was necessary to have gas mantles, which were liable to break, and under each light Dalen placed a wooden peg holding a string of fresh mantles in place. When a mantle breaks its < trcam of light pours down on the spot where the ])eg rests and releases machinery which brings another mantle into position. Such are the problems this brilliant man worked out. When his own eyes

became (lark there were messages of sympathy for him from all parts t>f the world, but it was he himself who had to fight his battle. For a moment his mirage sank: then he looked the facts in the face and said; "I am blind; it is for me to make the best of my blindness." Bravest Man in Sweden He took op things where he had left them. He taught himself to dispense with his eyes. Under this blind man's direction companies grew up in all parts of tho world. Great workshops were

maintained, constructing delicate appliances with all the exactitude for which Swedish workmen are so famous, turning out new forms of light for streets, for floating buoys, for lighthouses and airways. There may be some argument about who is the greatest man in Sweden, but there can be little doubt about the bravest. All over the world you will hear nothing but praise for Dr. Dalen and his work. Everything passing through his workshops must bt- constructed with severe exactness, tested again and again. A little error in the construction of a cylinder, a momentary carelessness with a light-valve, might mean that in some lonely place a ship would come to grief because a light had gone out. It does not happen with the Dalen lights. The blind man's lamps shine on.