A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse

by Theresa Levitt

Overview

“Combin[es] matters of biography, science, engineering, technology, art, history, economics and politics seemingly effortlessly and definitely seamlessly. An excellent book and a joy to read.”—Henry Petroski, Wall Street Journal

Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) shocked the scientific elite with his unique understanding of the physics of light. The lens he invented was a brilliant feat of engineering that made lighthouses blaze many times brighter, farther, and more efficiently. Battling the establishment, his own poor health, and the limited technology of the time, Fresnel was able to achieve his goal of illuminating the entire French coast. At first, the British sought to outdo the new Fresnel-equipped lighthouses as a matter of national pride. Americans, too, resisted abandoning their primitive lamps, but the superiority of the Fresnel lens could not be denied for long. Soon, from Dunkirk to Saigon, shores were brightened with it.  The Fresnel legacy played an important role in geopolitical events, including the American Civil War. No sooner were Fresnel lenses finally installed along U.S. shores than they were drafted: the Union blockaded the Confederate coast; the Confederacy set about thwarting it by dismantling and hiding or destroying the powerful new lights.

Levitt’s scientific and historical account, rich in anecdote and personality, brings to life the fascinating untold story of Augustin Fresnel and his powerful invention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393350890
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/12/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	425,900
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Theresa Levitt held the McDonnell-Barksdale Chair of History of Science at the University of Mississippi and is associate professor of history there. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has a master’s degree in history from Iowa State University and a PhD from Harvard University. She was the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant and a Fulbright IIE Graduate Research Fellowship, among other honors. She is the author of numerous articles and papers on a variety of scientific subjects.

Editorial Reviews

"[F]ascinating book…Levitt’s writing captures the mix of scientific rigor and cultural shifts in a way that mirrors the sea voyages of the day—a journey fraught with uncertainty, but in the end, guided to success by Fresnel’s lighthouse lenses."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Matthew Tiffany

"Fresnel indeed lit up his country and the world."

Nature - Joanne Baker

University of Mississippi history professor Levitt details the birth and golden age of a maritime icon in this fascinating book. The story starts in France in the early 1800s with physicist Augustin Fresnel, who countered the shortcomings of mirror-equipped lighthouses (half of the light is absorbed rather than reflected) by inventing an ingeniously designed lens that would bend the light from a source into a far-reaching beam. The first practical method for lighting the wine-dark sea was installed in 1823 on the coast of France at the elaborate Cordouan lighthouse—the “Versailles of the sea”—which had previously been lit by a simple pile of burning wood. Levitt then turns her attention stateside, where economic, social, and cultural barriers initially delayed the adoption of the technology. By 1859, however, nearly every American lighthouse sported a Fresnel lens. Shortly thereafter, during the Civil War, the enlightenment of the heretofore obscure coast would revolutionize naval warfare and harbor defense. Levitt’s study covers a short time span, but like a Fresnel lens to light, she bends plenty of material into this illuminating history of what one paper of the day poetically called “a manufacture from which emanate the useful and the beautiful as kindred and inseparable spirits.” 60 illus. & 6 maps. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"With his frantic pace of invention and early death, “he’s just like those romantic heroines of 1830s Paris burning themselves up through their passions,” said the historian Theresa Levitt, whose new book is A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse."

New York Times - Eva Kahn

"Combin[es] matters of biography, science, engineering, technology, art, history, economics and politics seemingly effortlessly and definitely seamlessly. An excellent book and a joy to read."

The Wall Street Journal - Henry Petroski

"Theresa Levitt interweaves the personal triumph of the French physicist Augustin Fresnel with his pathbreaking work on the nature of light in her fascinating recounting of how the coasts of the world were made safe for the world’s seafaring vessels through a mix of genius, ingenuity, and perseverance. The story has a fascinating American coda."

Joyce Appleby

"It is rare that we see a lighthouse-related book, historical in nature, with the level of research that was put into A Short Bright Flash. Theresa Levitt’s superior work has illustrated the genius and ongoing legacy of Augustin Fresnel, whose brilliance not only saved lives but had an everlasting impact on the development of world trade, and whose advanced ideas are still implemented in today’s modern culture."

Jeffrey S. Gales

Homage to the man who turned feeble-and-far-between harbor lights into a global multitude of brilliant beacons. Levitt (History/Univ. of Mississippi) trains the spotlight on Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827), a French civil engineer whose early-19th-century optics experiments demonstrated that light traveled in waves, challenging leading scientists who defended particle theory. He went on to develop the Fresnel lens system, a series of triangular-shaped glass prisms in circular arrays, each prism angled to refract light into a single strong beam that projected to the horizon and beyond. Fresnel died of tuberculosis at age 39, but his legacy survived. Fresnel lenses would eventually replace the far-less-efficient lighthouses that shined light reflected from silver-mirrored parabola-shaped enclosures. However, Fresnel lenses were costly and required quality glass and precision grinding at a time in Paris when a horse powered the glassmaker's machines. Levitt's scrupulous scholarship and contextual setting serve readers well. She reminds us of how dangerous the sailor's life was and how low-intensity reflectors fell far short of the brightness and depth that ships required to prevent their foundering. The author also neatly contrasts Britain with France and America. Britain was ahead of France in Fresnel's time, already replacing horses with steam power and soon competing with the French in manufacturing Fresnel lenses. Meanwhile, America remained decades behind, thanks to a bureaucracy in which lighthouse management was in the hands of a treasury department auditor who would not use the Fresnel lenses. That changed in the 1840s with a new generation of progressives and the presidency of James Polk, ushering in massive lighthouse building with Fresnel installations--until the Civil War, when the Confederacy hid or destroyed many of them. Thanks to radio, radar and GPS, the "golden era" of lighthouses is over, but Levitt's century-and-a-half saga of an innovator whose ideas were at times fostered, at times thwarted, by politicians or leading scientists, is most welcome.

Kirkus Reviews