Lighthouse Day

The advent of automation gradually made the traditional lighthouse keeper unnecessary. Today, all lighthouses in the United States are automated, with the exception of the Boston Light, in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.
– National Park Service

For centuries, lighthouses have been a fixture of America's coastline, their beacons guiding mariners to safer shores.
– BBC

The first lighthouse optics that he [Fresnel] designed combined highly polished prisms with an array of lenses that captured light and concentrated it back into a main beam. The design was concentric in arrangement, funneling the light into a beam that was many times brighter than its source. This light could be seen for more than 20 miles.
– Library of Congress

The elevated walkway or catwalk found on some of the piers of the Great Lakes was necessary for the keeper to get to the light during severe storms when waves washed over the pier or ice made it too dangerous to walk on the pier.
– National Park Service

Lighthouses are human-made stars on the night sky horizon, built as navigational aids to mark entries into harbors and warn sailors of dangerous coast line, reefs, and sand bars.
– National Park Service

The Poe Reef lighthouse in Cheboygan, Michigan, features a 71-foot-tall square tower on a concrete crib. It is one of six out-of-commission lighthouses that are being auctioned by the US government at an asking price of around $15,000 each.
– CNN

A lighthouse built in 1829, known as the Barcelona light, and sometimes called the Portland light located on Lake Erie, was unique because of its fuel source. The nearby town of Fredonia, New York was the first site in North America to commercially use Natural gas, starting in 1821.
– U.S. Lighthouse Society

On March 20, 1823, the lantern was lighted for the first time at the Northeast Pass Lighthouse. Lewis’ lighthouse served as a working navigational beacon until 1856. Over time, the lantern gallery was destroyed and the tower was in disrepair.
– U.S. Lighthouse Society

The last great agent employed in lighthouse illumination is electricity.
– Fragments of Science

A lighthouse, at some distance from the walls of Odessa, is the first landmark noted by mariners.
– Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, The Crimea, The Caucasus, &c

The Fresnel lens (pronounced "Frey Nel"), as it came to be known, represented a monumental step forward in lighthouse lighting technology, and therefore also in maritime safety....The lens could produce an unlimited number of flashing combinations and intensified the light so it could be seen at greater distances, allowing mariners a greater deal of safety in their navigations near shore.
– National Park Service

Lighthouses are human-made stars on the night sky horizon, built as navigational aids to mark entries into harbors and warn sailors of dangerous coast line, reefs, and sand bars.
– National Park Service

Experience lighthouse life during a visit to almost any of Michigan’s 129 historic beacons. Most lighthouses offer public tours, and some invite visitors onto the parapet, the platform that wraps around the lantern room.
– Pure Michigan

Most lighthouses rhythmically flash or eclipse their lights to provide an identification signal. The particular pattern of flashes or eclipses is known as the character of the light, and the interval at which it repeats itself is called the period.
– Britannica

In 1829, two piers were built to channel the river. A new wooden lighthouse was built at the end of the west pier in 1838, replaced by a new structure in 1854 and again by a cast iron beacon in 1880.
– The Historical Marker Database

The first lighthouse optics that he [Fresnel] designed combined highly polished prisms with an array of lenses that captured light and concentrated it back into a main beam. The design was concentric in arrangement, funneling the light into a beam that was many times brighter than its source. This light could be seen for more than 20 miles.
– Library of Congress

The early lens designs by Augustin Fresnel, in 1823, used flat mirrors to reflect portions of the light above and below the main dioptric belt of the lens. Later, Fresnel also used mirrors with a slight parabolic curve to improve his design.
– U.S. Lighthouse Society

In 1821 Augustin Fresnel of France produced the first apparatus using the refracting properties of glass, now known as the dioptric system, or Fresnel lens.
– Britannica

The earliest known maps of Long Island Sound, charted by Adrian Block during his explorations of the area in 1614, show two islands where Stratford Shoal Lighthouse now stands. Over the following hundred years or so, the sea washed the islands off the map, leaving behind the dangerous Middleground Shoal, measuring three-quarters of a mile long.
– Lighthouse Friends

About the beginning of the 20th century, compressed air fog signals, which sounded a series of blasts, were developed. The most widely used were the siren and the diaphone. The siren consisted of a slotted rotor revolving inside a slotted stator that was located at the throat of a horn.
– Britannica

Some light towers are standalone structures, while others are attached
or integral to the keeper's quarters or fog signal building. The tower served principally as a support for the lantern which housed the optic.
– National Park Service

When looking at the type and amount of interior ventilation needed for a closed-up lighthouse, there are four critical climate zones: cold and damp (Pacific northwest and northeastern states); temperate and humid (mid-Atlantic states, coastal areas); hot and humid (southern states), and the
extremely cold (freezing) and seasonably damp (Great Lakes).
– National Park Service

The two whistle blasts came from the Pigeon Point Lighthouse fog signal. Pretty soon there were 150 German sailors knocking on the keeper’s door in the early morning hours. Mariners were no doubt confused by lighthouse whistles in the fog on a few occasions, but whistle fog signals continued to be used at lighthouses throughout the United States for many years.
– U.S. Lighthouse Society

The two whistle blasts came from the Pigeon Point Lighthouse fog signal. Pretty soon there were 150 German sailors knocking on the keeper’s door in the early morning hours. Mariners were no doubt confused by lighthouse whistles in the fog on a few occasions, but whistle fog signals continued to be used at lighthouses throughout the United States for many years.
– U.S. Lighthouse Society

The vessel, owned by Egypt's maritime safety authority, runs supply missions to a lighthouse in the Red Sea.
– BBC