A short, bright flash : Augustin Fresnel and the birth of the modern lighthouse

Title:

Author:

Levitt, Theresa.

ISBN:

9780393068795

Edition:

First edition.

Publication Date:

2013

Physical Description:

281 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

Language:

English

Subject Term:

Lighthouses -- History.

Fresnel lenses -- History.

Physicists -- France -- Biography.

Contents:

Dark and deadly shores -- Dreams of glory -- The flash of brilliance -- The dream of total refraction -- Race to perfection -- The American exception -- Everything recklessly broken -- The golden age.

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Summary

Augustin Fresnel (1788?1827) shocked the scientific elite with his unique understanding of the physics of light. The lens he invented was a brilliant feat of engineering that made lighthouses blaze many times brighter, farther, and more efficiently. Battling the establishment, his own poor health, and the limited technology of the time, Fresnel was able to achieve his goal of illuminating the entire French coast. At first, the British sought to outdo the new Fresnel-equipped lighthouses as a matter of national pride. Americans, too, resisted abandoning their primitive lamps, but the superiority of the Fresnel lens could not be?denied for long. Soon, from?Dunkirk to Saigon, shores were brightened with it.? The Fresnel legacy played an important role in geopolitical events, including the American Civil War. No sooner were Fresnel lenses finally installed along U.S. shores than they were drafted: the Union blockaded the Confederate coast; the Confederacy set about thwarting it by dismantling and hiding or destroying the powerful new lights. Levitt's scientific and historical account, rich in anecdote and personality, brings to life the fascinating untold story of Augustin Fresnel and his powerful invention.

Reviews: (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

University of Mississippi history professor Levitt details the birth and golden age of a maritime icon in this fascinating book. The story starts in France in the early 1800s with physicist Augustin Fresnel, who countered the shortcomings of mirror-equipped lighthouses (half of the light is absorbed rather than reflected) by inventing an ingeniously designed lens that would bend the light from a source into a far-reaching beam. The first practical method for lighting the wine-dark sea was installed in 1823 on the coast of France at the elaborate Cordouan lighthouse-the "Versailles of the sea"-which had previously been lit by a simple pile of burning wood. Levitt then turns her attention stateside, where economic, social, and cultural barriers initially delayed the adoption of the technology. By 1859, however, nearly every American lighthouse sported a Fresnel lens. Shortly thereafter, during the Civil War, the enlightenment of the heretofore obscure coast would revolutionize naval warfare and harbor defense. Levitt's study covers a short time span, but like a Fresnel lens to light, she bends plenty of material into this illuminating history of what one paper of the day poetically called "a manufacture from which emanate the useful and the beautiful as kindred and inseparable spirits." 60 illus. & 6 maps. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

Homage to the man who turned feeble-and-far-between harbor lights into a global multitude of brilliant beacons. Levitt (History/Univ. of Mississippi) trains the spotlight on Augustin Fresnel (17881827), a French civil engineer whose early-19th-century optics experiments demonstrated that light traveled in waves, challenging leading scientists who defended particle theory. He went on to develop the Fresnel lens system, a series of triangular-shaped glass prisms in circular arrays, each prism angled to refract light into a single strong beam that projected to the horizon and beyond. Fresnel died of tuberculosis at age 39, but his legacy survived. Fresnel lenses would eventually replace the far-less-efficient lighthouses that shined light reflected from silver-mirrored parabola-shaped enclosures. However, Fresnel lenses were costly and required quality glass and precision grinding at a time in Paris when a horse powered the glassmaker's machines. Levitt's scrupulous scholarship and contextual setting serve readers well. She reminds us of how dangerous the sailor's life was and how low-intensity reflectors fell far short of the brightness and depth that ships required to prevent their foundering. The author also neatly contrasts Britain with France and America. Britain was ahead of France in Fresnel's time, already replacing horses with steam power and soon competing with the French in manufacturing Fresnel lenses. Meanwhile, America remained decades behind, thanks to a bureaucracy in which lighthouse management was in the hands of a treasury department auditor who would not use the Fresnel lenses. That changed in the 1840s with a new generation of progressives and the presidency of James Polk, ushering in massive lighthouse building with Fresnel installations--until the Civil War, when the Confederacy hid or destroyed many of them. Thanks to radio, radar and GPS, the "golden era" of lighthouses is over, but Levitt's century-and-a-half saga of an innovator whose ideas were at times fostered, at times thwarted, by politicians or leading scientists, is most welcome.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Choice Review

Since the ancient Greeks, civilizations built lighthouses to provide navigational aids for ships approaching port. However, few improvements beyond creating a tall firelight with limited visibility marking a harbor entrance occurred before the early 1800s. A brighter light was necessary for lighthouses to be useful navigational tools and to mark dangerous shallows and reefs. Fresnel (1788-1827) invented a large prismatic lens that became the fundamental technology of the modern lighthouse, with its first application at Cordouan, France, in 1823. Simultaneously practical and beautiful, the Fresnel lens was designed to bend point source lamplight into a powerful, directional beam. Rotating the lens assembly allowed the beam to sweep the horizon, creating a bright flash of a certain frequency, visible for miles. Fresnel lenses were adopted for lighting the world's coastlines for 130 years, until radar and then global positioning satellites replaced most navigational needs for lighthouses. In this engaging narrative, Levitt (Univ. of Mississippi) covers Fresnel's biography, the basic science and technology concepts behind development of the lens, implementation history and public acceptance, and historical vignettes illustrating the technology's impact. The text is well illustrated and includes thorough endnotes. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. S. A. Curtis University of Missouri--Kansas City