Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Fresnel lens reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections. An ideal Fresnel lens would have an infinite number of sections. In each section, the overall thickness is decreased compared to an equivalent simple lens.
A zone plate is a device used to focus light or other things exhibiting wave character. [ 1] Unlike lenses or curved mirrors, zone plates use diffraction instead of refraction or reflection. Based on analysis by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, they are sometimes called Fresnel zone plates in his honor.
The original light was an Argand-Lewis parabolic reflector, lit with candles and with a visibility of 2 miles (3.2 km). Augustin Fresnel invented a superior way of focusing light in the early 1850s and most lighthouses in the U.S. were converted to the Fresnel Lens, with Pemaquid Point receiving a fourth order Fresnel in 1856.
On May 15, 1874, the Gay Head Light was changed from flashing white to "three whites and one red" to differentiate the light from the area's two other principal lights located at Sankaty Head and Montauk Point. All three lights had Fresnel lenses, however, the Gay Head Light was the only light of the 1st Order.
The simplest Fresnel zone plate antenna is the circular half-wave zone plate invented in the nineteenth century. The basic idea is to divide a plane aperture into circular zones with respect to a chosen focal point on the basis that all radiation from each zone arrives at the focal point in phase within ±π/2 range.
The tower is circular, and is 49 feet (15 m) in height, with the beacon at 83 feet (25 m) above sea level. The light, magnified by a third-order Fresnel lens, has a range of 18 miles (29 km). The tower is built of brick, and painted in alternating horizontal red and white stripes. A small gabled entry vestibule, also brick, projects from the tower.
The new all-white lighthouse tower was completed in 1868, receiving a first-order Fresnel lens made by Henry-Lepaute and Company of Paris, France that was first lit on May 10, 1868. [ 1 ] [ 6 ] The lower three levels of the tower served as the living quarters for the keepers and his assistants complete with kitchen, living room and bedrooms.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Augustin-Jean Fresnel[ Note 1] (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton 's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s [ 3] until the end of the 19th century. He is ...