Kilauea Lighthouse

 Our Ocracoke lighthouse is this year 200 years old.  We are proud that it is the oldest functioning lighthouse in the US.  In 1854 it was fitted with a very early Fresnel lens, developed by French physicist Augustine Fresnel about the time our lighthouse was built.  Ours is a Fourth Order Fresnel Lens that pushes the light out until it is visible fourteen miles at sea.  Our Fourth Order Lens is about two feet tall.

Yesterday Trish and I got to visit the remarkable Kilauea Lighthouse on the eastern shore of Kauai. 

This lighthouse is not very tall. It does not need to be as it sits on a high rocky outcrop that is already perched far above the ocean.

The most remarkable thing about this lighthouse, built in 1913, is that it has a very rare Second Order Fresnel Lens.  The lens itself stands just over six feet tall and weighs 8,000 pounds.  This Second Order Lens pushes what was historically an oil flame into visibility for twenty-four miles out at sea. It is a beautiful piece of work.

Now electrified, the light, which has a mechanism making it appear to rotate or flash, originally had to be manually crank-wound every three and a half hours.  

Being a lighthouse keeper was a very full time job. Carrying lamp oil, adjusting flues for wind and weather, keeping the burner clean and non-stop functional, cleaning the lens, maintaining the structure itself, winding and maintaining the rotation mechanism, this was not a passive job.  

The lives saved by the world’s lighthouses is a number impossible to estimate and much of that success is due to Augustine Fresnel.  He died of tuberculosis at age thirty-nine in 1827.