A WONDERFUL LAMP

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6407, 27 October 1923, Page 2

A WONDERFUL LAMP

ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST A wonderful lamp has been made for the Egyptian Government at the Smethwick (England) .works of Messrs Chance. A few weeks ago the light was working at Smethwick as it will work when erected at Port Said. It will be one of the biggest lights in the world, for the beam has an intensity equal to 1,250,000 candles. Thousands of prisms are used for blending the divergent rays of light into the beam, and every one has been set with focal accuracy, so that not a scrap of light is wasted. The whole light, weighing nearly 4 tons, floats in a bath containing 4501 bof mercury. This reduces frictional resistance so much that the light can be set moving by the push of a finger. It is revolved by clockwork, operated by a small falling weight. This splendid light will have a luminous range of nearly 100 miles in clear weather in the Mediterranean. A wonderful thing at the Smethwick works is the lighthouse in the works yard, which for nine months has been operated by an automatic light valve. Every evening at dusk it lights up, and so sensitive to the heat of daylight are the ether-filled bulbs that when fog comes the light begins to work, the gas being used to make it revolve.