The Cruiser; A Quarterly Magazine of Cruising Tales and Adventures Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...the watch case to bulge outward a quarter of an inch at the center the proportions of the Navesink lens will be accurately represented, for it is five feet thick on the inside diameter. Ingress between the glistening shells is effected along the pedestal, and as there are sixty inches of space between there is sufficient room in which to move about. In the exact center of this space, and therefore precisely midway between the center of the bull's-eye in each half of the lens, is the arc light. Here Mr. Bishop discharged statistics like a mitrailleuse. "It is the only electric light in use in any lighthouse in the country," he began. "This arc lamp itself is of 7,000 candle-power, which will give you a fine estimate of the work of those long, glass triangles when you think that they throw the light of 100,000,000 candle-power through these heavy glass cores. But I can tell you something a good deal more wonderful than that. Whenever the Government sees fit we can raise the full power of the light to 200,000,000 candles by substituting a 14,000-candle lamp for the present one. This would then be the absolute capacity of the lens. But what would that add to the value of the light when at the present time it has been picked up by shipmasters nearly a hundred miles away? Besides, even this one dazzles the eyes of the folk ashore who are on the level of the focus, and when it was first installed the pilots complained that it blinded them going up a vessel's side. "The light is focused on the horizon, which at this altitude is about twenty-three miles away, and, although you may have a fine effect of it at points eight or ten miles distant, like Coney Island, it is not until you reach a point nearly twenty-three miles beyond...