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Beacons were later used in Greece as well, while the surviving parts of the beacon system in Anatolia seem to have been reactivated in the 12th century by Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. [6] In Scandinavia many hill forts were part of beacon networks to warn against invading pillagers.
The main line of beacons stretched over some 720 km (450 mi). In the open spaces of central Asia Minor, the stations were placed over 97 km (60 mi) apart, while in Bithynia, with its more broken terrain, the intervals were reduced to ca. 56 km (35 mi).
An airway beacon (US) or aerial lighthouse (UK and Europe) was a rotating light assembly mounted atop a tower. These were once used extensively in the United States for visual navigation by airplane pilots along a specified airway corridor. In Europe, they were used to guide aircraft with lighted beacons at night. [1] [2]
The lamp (made in approx. 1914) burned vaporized kerosene (paraffin); the vaporizer was heated by a denatured alcohol (methylated spirit) burner to light. When lit, some of the vaporised fuel was diverted to a Bunsen burner to keep the vaporizer warm and the fuel in vapor form. The fuel was forced up to the lamp by air; the keepers had to pump ...
These were generally made of wood, as it was readily available. Due to the fire hazard, masonry towers were increasingly built - the oldest standing masonry tower was Sandy Hook Lighthouse, built in 1764 in New Jersey. Screw-pile lighthouses were used in Chesapeake Bay and along the Carolina coast in the United States. The first screw pile ...
Towers were built on selected mountaintops, so that one tower, the phryctoria, would be visible to the next tower, usually 30 km (20 mi) distant. Flames were lit on one tower, then the next tower would light a flame in succession. The Byzantine beacon system was a semaphore developed in the 9th century during the Arab–Byzantine wars.
These are the remnants of Transcontinental Air Mail Route Beacon 37A, which was located atop a bluff in St. George, Utah, U.S.A. With concrete arrows indicating the direction to the next beacon, a rotating light tower, and a shed that usually held a generator and fuel tanks, these beacons were once situated every 10 miles on air routes across the United States beginning around 1923.
The towers were used for the transmission of a specific prearranged message. One tower would light its flame, the next tower would see the fire, and light its own. In Aeschylus tragedy Agamemnon, a slave watchman character learns the news of Troy's fall from Mycenae by carefully watching a fire beacon.