The late Ken Black, retired Coast Guard Officer and avid collector and exhibiter of all things lighthouse, liked to preface his public talks with an amusing observation: "Lighthouses are like people: they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors." Always offered with a mischievous grin, Black's quip is absolutely true. The world's shorelines are not only made safer by lighthouses but also more beautiful and culturally unique because of the diverse lighthouse designs seen today and throughout history.
Who--o-o-o-a there, pardner! Whose Light House Bureau? Could these be the Confederates who smashed the lenses? The same fine folks who blew up the towers? The Southern gentlemen who systematically destroyed what the Good Guys in the federal government had built?
Since the establishment of the first lighthouse at Boston Harbor's Little Brewster Island in 1716, lighthouses have needed supplies. Our first lighthouse keeper, George Worthylake, ferried his supplies to Boston Lighthouse via rowboat. But as the service grew and the number of light stations increased, more than rowboats were needed. The materials the government furnished light stations and the means of furnishing them varied over the years. Until 1852, lighthouses were a collateral duty of the local Collector of Customs.
Lightships were essential partners with America's lighthouses as part of the federal government's commitment to safe navigation on the nation's coasts and on the Great Lakes. While the first American lighthouse dates to the colonial era, the use of lightships is a more recent 19th century phenomenon in the Untied States, though employed earlier in Europe.
Most lighthouse research is drudgery. You go from item to item of mostly boring detail and slowly, very slowly, progress is made. But once in awhile, an unusual discovery is made and you run across a real gem buried in the musty details. That was the case with this story. In an obscure file box in the National Archives, I ran across information about Captain H. H. Doty that filled in many missing pieces of information about his struggles with our government some one hundred and thirty years ago.
The frequent visits to the light stations by the district inspector were exciting and momentous events in the life of the keeper and his family. From the 1840s, still in the days of Stephen Pleasonton’s autocratic oversight of the Light-House Establishment, a system of periodic visits by inspecting officers was established. This became a much more formal process when the Light-House Board took over supervision of the Establishment in 1852.
In 1593 began the building of a daymark on the isle of Terschelling, off the North Sea coast from The Netherlands. This part of the Dutch coast was an important shipping route to the Zuiderzee, after the building of the "Afsluitdijk" called Usselmeer. On the shores of the Zuiderzee are towns as Amsterdam, Kampen, Enkhuizen en Hoorn situated, and it were these towns who were mainly in charge of safeguarding the shipping routes from the towns to the open sea to protect their trading interests. As early as 1323 there was a church with a tower annexed on the island of Terschelling.
Many companies were involved in the development and refinement of the Fresnel lens. Some supplied only the glass for the lenses, either in rough form, or both cast and polished. Other companies assembled the glass elements and performed finish work on the lens elements. Still other companies produced both the glass and the finished lenses. This story will be divided into several parts, each discussing one or more of these companies and their contribution to the development of the Fresnel lens.
Louis Sautter (pronounced So-tay) completed engineering school at the Central School of Arts and Manufactures in 1846. Helped by one backer, Fernand Raoul-Duval, Sautter entered the navigation aids business in 1852, when he assumed ownership and management of the company that would carry his name. The business was previously wwned by Francois Soleil Sr., which by this time had passed from him to his son-in-law Jean Jacques Francois and ultimately to Francois' son-in- law Theodore Letourneau. The factory was then located at 37 Avenue Montaigne on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
The founder of the Lepaute dynasty of clockmakers was Jean Andre Paute, born in 1720 in Thonne-la-Long, France. He was the son of Andre Paute, blacksmith and maker of plows. Andre Paute had nine conchildren and two of his sons were Jean Andre Paute and Jean Baptist Paute.