WIRELESS LIGHTHOUSES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20610, 8 January 1929, Page 10

WIRELESS LIGHTHOUSES.

SOUND VERSUS LIGHT FOR GUIDANCE. The latest thing in lighthouses is the wireless lighthouse. Instead of -flashing out beams of light, it sends forth. “ flashes ” of sound beams by witeless transmission. To profit by these signals a ship must be fitted with special receivers, which also indicate the direction from_ which the signals are coming. . This new type of lighthouse (says the Christian Science Monitor) will provide the captain of a ship with something for which he has hitherto sighed in vain—a means of keeping exact track of the position of his ship when near a coast during’ a fog. Many fogs are impervious to the most powerful old-fashioned lighthouses.. The new “beams” are, therefore, welcome, and of incalculable value. But in clear weather the oil lighthouse will still be the more popular, for there is something very reassuring in the strong, confident wink of a lighthouse which one recognises as an old friend! Perhaps the new application of wireless against fog will not stop short at lighthouses and lightships. Ships themselves carry strong lights, but something that can penetrate fog has been needed ever since navigation began. In thick weatlier at eea snips have to make use of fog horns and steam whistles to keep clear of each other. An apparatus with a restricted range which will enable ships to locate ships at a distance of a mile or has passed its experimental stage and will be a boon indeed to fog-bound mariners. \ ;