ELECTRIC LIGHTHOUSES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20536, 11 October 1928, Page 13

ELECTRIC LIGHTHOUSES.

OLD-TIME CALLING ENDING. The lighthouse keeper himself has probably never considered his calling romantic, yet it has been the subject of ballad and story times without number, writes A. B. Cooper in Overseas. Presently his calling, like that of the old-time wreckers and smugglers and pirates—his less reputable rivals in sea romance—will have become legendary, for the electricity which has consigned so many things to the scrap heap is now casting him there too. Seeing that he is not likely to be unemployed, but only removed permanently from his lonely station, the loss to romance which the mechanisation of the world so often means, seems cause for congratulation rather than sorrow. Penned in that narrow tower tending the light, keeping vigil sometimes for lonely weeks, in such isolated situations as the Skerryvore, the Wolf Rock, the Dhu Hearach, the Bell Rock, the Eddystone, exposed to terrific storms and not inconsiderable dangers, the lighthouse keeper’s life is not enviable. Now it seems likely to be ended, as far as our own coastwise lights are concerned, within the space of a few years at the most, for already the change is actually being made at the Penden, the Lizard, Hartland, and the Skerries. Trinity House, which controls all the lighthouses, lightships, beacons, and buoys around the British coast, has been busy, during the months of last winter, experimenting with a view to discovering the best type of electrical shore control, and now two entirely new types of automatic lighthouses have been constructed, one at the South Foreland and the other at Burnham, the Somerset, a light which marks the treacherous Gore Sands in the Bristol Channel. At neither of these lighthouses is a keeper now required, and not only is the light controlled by an ingenious electric system, but each of these lighthouses is fitted with a duplicate lamp, which automatically operates if the other, for any reason whatsoever, breaks down. Like many other electrical devices, the action of this duplicate lamp is almost uncanny, for, should its services be required, it not only lights up, but sends an .automatic warning to the shore. If the second lamp should fail—a possible but not very probable contingency, perhapsan acetylene burner is lighted automatically Needless to say, a lighthouse which failed would be much worse than no lighthouse at. all. It is thus well to bo assured by Trinity House that these two experimental lighthouses have operated perfectly. They have been visited every day, and the mechanism inspected, but in actual practice it will not be needful to visit these mechanically-controlled lighthouses _ more often than oucc a week and even this is only necessary to maintain the navy-like spotlessncss of the mechanism and reflectors. There will be times undoubtedly when the remoter lights may not be accessible during much longer spaces of time, but there is no reason to anticipate any failure on that account. Tho light will go on burning. entirely controlled from the shore. _ But in addition to the automatic keeperless lighthouses. Trinity House has another novelty up its sleeve—the wireless lighthouse, which is not a lighthouse at all! About 20 of these wireless beam lighthouses are now under construction, but in place of the light there is sent out without intermission a wireless beam of 100 miles’ range, so that vessels picking it up can always define their position, whatever the state of the weather may be, and even in the densest fog. It will he seen that this is in some respects an improvement on the light itself, for even (he strongest light may bo obscured by fog. and even the great light at St. Katherine’s Point in tho Isle of Wightlias nothing like an effective range of 100 miles. In the case of the wireless “lighthouses.’’ which perhaps may come to be called boambonses, the mechanism is automatic, needing no keeper, and is also in duplicate as a safeguard against breakdown- '