but also meant that Argand couldn't count on capillary action alone to feed the flame, since the viscous animal and vegetable oils of the time rose so slowly up the wick. To solve this problem, Argand designed an oil reservoir adjacent to and higher than the burner, which used gravity to feed fuel to the lamp, but the reservoir partially obscured the light and cast a shadow.
"Being 'the thing,' the Argand or Quinquet lamps [as they were known in France] were usually made up in bronze, silver, porcelain, crystal, and other expensive materials that kept them well out of reach of the ordinary purse," observes historian Marshall Davidson. And it wasn't just the cost of the lamps that kept those of meager means from buying them; the quantity of oil required stopped them as well. Brilliance still came at a price, and they knew it. "The modest versions that Yankee tinsmiths were advertising as early as 1789 did not win any broad popularity," notes Davidson. "Absurd as it sounds they gave too much light. That is to say, it was impracticable to make them so small that they had no greater flame than that of a single candle and ... anything that burned more oil, proportionately, whatever its brilliance and efficiency, was uneconomical for ordinary domestic purposes."
For mariners, the Argand lamp was invaluable. A lighthouse equipped with one magnified by a parabolic reflector not only gave many times the light of the old lighthouse lamps, but the light proved steadier and more dependable. The adoption of the Argand lamp for seamarks, along with an increase in lighthouse construction, meant, according to Stevenson, that "the single most powerful light of 1819 exceeded the combined powers of all the navigation lights of 1780." And perhaps the greatest innovation, one used even now, was still to come.
In 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel designed a hive of light. His Fresnel lensâa lamp comprising concentric wicks set in bull's-eye glass and surrounded by rings of glass prismsâbent and concentrated light into a bright, narrow beam. The largest of his lenses, meant to aid ships along the most treacherous and fogbound coasts, was built of a thousand prisms and stood more than ten feet high. When placed one hundred feet or so above sea levelâhigh enough to compensate for the curvature of the earthâits beam could be seen for twenty miles. Fresnel produced his lens in six different sizes; the smallest, a sixth-order lens used in harbors and bays, was a mere twelve inches in diameter and stood eighteen inches high.
Throughout the nineteenth century, in addition to installing Fresnel lenses and replacing old oil lamps with more dependable electric lights or gaslights, lighthouses would begin to adopt a system of flashing lights to distinguish one seamark from the next. Mariners unfamiliar with the coast could get their bearings even when daymarksâthe painted patterns on lighthouse towersâdisappeared with the sun. And lightships, light buoys, and sound signals such as whistles, bells, and foghorns frequently marked the more treacherous shoals.
Still, shipwrecks were a given well into the twentieth century. In the early 1920s, there were twelve working Coast Guard stations along fifty miles of the south shore of Cape Cod, and lantern-carrying surfmen patrolled the shores, scanning the waters for ships in distress. "Every night they go; every night of the year the eastern beaches see the coming and going of the wardens of Cape Cod. Winter and summer they pass and repass, now through the midnight sleet and fury of a great northeaster, now through August quiet ... the beach traced and retraced with footprints that vanish in the distances," observed Henry Beston, who chronicled life on "the Great Beach of Cape Cod."
There has just been a great wreck, the fifth this winter and the worst.... The big three-masted schooner
Montclair
stranded at Orleans and went to pieces in an hour, drowning five of her
"Being 'the thing,' the Argand or Quinquet lamps [as they were known in France] were usually made up in bronze, silver, porcelain, crystal, and other expensive materials that kept them well out of reach of the ordinary purse," observes historian Marshall Davidson. And it wasn't just the cost of the lamps that kept those of meager means from buying them; the quantity of oil required stopped them as well. Brilliance still came at a price, and they knew it. "The modest versions that Yankee tinsmiths were advertising as early as 1789 did not win any broad popularity," notes Davidson. "Absurd as it sounds they gave too much light. That is to say, it was impracticable to make them so small that they had no greater flame than that of a single candle and ... anything that burned more oil, proportionately, whatever its brilliance and efficiency, was uneconomical for ordinary domestic purposes."
For mariners, the Argand lamp was invaluable. A lighthouse equipped with one magnified by a parabolic reflector not only gave many times the light of the old lighthouse lamps, but the light proved steadier and more dependable. The adoption of the Argand lamp for seamarks, along with an increase in lighthouse construction, meant, according to Stevenson, that "the single most powerful light of 1819 exceeded the combined powers of all the navigation lights of 1780." And perhaps the greatest innovation, one used even now, was still to come.
In 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel designed a hive of light. His Fresnel lensâa lamp comprising concentric wicks set in bull's-eye glass and surrounded by rings of glass prismsâbent and concentrated light into a bright, narrow beam. The largest of his lenses, meant to aid ships along the most treacherous and fogbound coasts, was built of a thousand prisms and stood more than ten feet high. When placed one hundred feet or so above sea levelâhigh enough to compensate for the curvature of the earthâits beam could be seen for twenty miles. Fresnel produced his lens in six different sizes; the smallest, a sixth-order lens used in harbors and bays, was a mere twelve inches in diameter and stood eighteen inches high.
Throughout the nineteenth century, in addition to installing Fresnel lenses and replacing old oil lamps with more dependable electric lights or gaslights, lighthouses would begin to adopt a system of flashing lights to distinguish one seamark from the next. Mariners unfamiliar with the coast could get their bearings even when daymarksâthe painted patterns on lighthouse towersâdisappeared with the sun. And lightships, light buoys, and sound signals such as whistles, bells, and foghorns frequently marked the more treacherous shoals.
Still, shipwrecks were a given well into the twentieth century. In the early 1920s, there were twelve working Coast Guard stations along fifty miles of the south shore of Cape Cod, and lantern-carrying surfmen patrolled the shores, scanning the waters for ships in distress. "Every night they go; every night of the year the eastern beaches see the coming and going of the wardens of Cape Cod. Winter and summer they pass and repass, now through the midnight sleet and fury of a great northeaster, now through August quiet ... the beach traced and retraced with footprints that vanish in the distances," observed Henry Beston, who chronicled life on "the Great Beach of Cape Cod."
There has just been a great wreck, the fifth this winter and the worst.... The big three-masted schooner
Montclair
stranded at Orleans and went to pieces in an hour, drowning five of her
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