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| When walking over the cobble areas on the south side beaches at Race Rocks, we often turn up pieces of very thick glass. This one was found in April, 2006.This glass came from the Fresnel lens on the original light installed in 1860, seen here on the right in an artists drawing. | The light was made up of a tall set of crystal prisms ( said to be Lalique crystal from France), designed to carry the beam from a gas-light far out to sea. We do not know why this complete cage was removed but you can see in these historic photos that it was replaced with the current cage sometime in the early 1900's. |
| An interesting adaptation of the Fresnel lens is noted in this article about using it to focus the suns energy in photovoltaic applications: | From CCG reference: These light stations used colza oil with the Argand burner until it was superseded by the introduction of mineral oils. Colza oil had been cheaper than whale oil, but mineral oil was cheaper than both and its use was extended after the development of a multiple wick burner, invented by a Frenchman, Captain Doty, for the consumption of hydro-carbon oils. The Doty burner was used in lighthouses till the end of the nineteenth century. |
 Trev and Flo Anderson have supplied several of these photos of the lights in the 1970's |
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| Only one was illuminated at a time, the others were backups. As one light burned out, the other rotated up into position.The base of the light floated on a platform in a tub of mercury to reduce friction. | This version mounted by the CoastGuard in 1968 rotated on a fixed plate on top of the old mercury basin. The Mercury was left sealed inside until an attempt to move the pedestal for a Pepsi commercial in the late 1980's caused a spill. The light was mounted after that on a solid pedestal. We are still looking for a picture of that light .It looked like a bank of a dozen headlights around a rotating column. Only one headlight was illuminated at a time. | |
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With automation in 1996, the light was replaced by an energy-efficient rotating lucite Fresnel lens, a modification of the type used in the 1800's . In order to understand why the Fresnel lens is so efficient beaming light from the 100 ft height to over 20 miles at sea. See this link with an explanation of the physics of a Fresnel lens.
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 The view to the horizon over the railing outside the caged light.This light is visible from those far shores. |
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The light stands on a pedestal. In the centre of the assembly is a 20 watt light bulb, the kind you may use in a desk lamp. This small light is visible at great distance. |
 The 20 watt bulb inside the light housing. |
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The mechanism which used to turn the light around on a bowl of mercury was this large counterweight which had to be wound up manually every four hours. There were holes in the steps which it allowed it to drop down slowly through several stories of the light tower.The weight still sits on a step although the holes have been concreted over with conduits running through them. | |
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Each step in line below through over half the tower height was painted with a black square by a former lightkeeper to show the line of fall of the counterweight. |
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| Barry and Ann Marie MacDonald toured the lighthouse after doing a presentation on Heritage Lighthouses at the Maritime Museum, Feb 2007 |
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You can get a live lose up look of the lucite-lens light beacon above currently operating at Race Rocks by going to the remote control camera 5 . Choose Java Applet viewer, click on control, and then on the white bar on the the left for presets.. go to Top of the Lighthouse.. Day or Night! |
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This QuickTime slideshow was made on a foggy evening of July 1 2006. Images were taken from the remote camera 5.
GF Photos. |
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