One man's legacy

“One man’s legacy
At the tail end of my Maine vacation, I stopped in Rockland for the grand opening of the Maine Lighthouse Museum.
Driving from Jonesport to Rockland on US Route 1 amounted to uncertainty that I would arrive on time.
I was told the trip would take three hours, and I got away at almost exactly 7 a.m. for the 10 a.m. ceremony.
Rockland is located on the western side of Penobscot Bay. From Ellsworth westward, the traffic increased with every mile.
I got into Rockland at almost exactly 10 and still had to find the museum and a parking spot.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Like all such public gatherings, this one was about 10 minutes fashionably late in getting started.
All of Rockland turned out, including the mayor and local political personages.
There were also people influential in the movement to preserve and restore lighthouses, and everybody got to speak to the gathering.
The one person who did not speak was Ken Black, who is the former Coast Guardsman who made it all possible.
Now in his 80s and having had some health problems, Ken wrote out a speech that was delivered by Tim Harrison of the American Lighthouse Foundation.
Ken, during his Coast Guard days, witnessed the automation of lighthouses along the Maine coast. The Coast Guard was scrapping Fresnel lenses that had been used in lighthouses.
Fresnel lenses feature glass prisms used to magnify and direct beams of light far out to sea. Invented by Augustin Fresnel in the mid-19th Century, the lenses became standard equipment in lighthouses because of their ability to magnify and direct the otherwise weak light of oil lamps.
Today those lenses are worth millions of dollars.
And far beyond the cost, the prisms of Fresnel lighthouse lenses are beautiful works of precision grinding, done in an age long before computers.
Ken began to gather up the artifacts that were about to be tossed, and with Coast Guard blessing opened up a museum of lighthouse equipment in Rockland.
Known as the Shore Village Museum, it was one of the destinations for lighthouse aficionados in Maine.
Rockland decided to put the collection into a gateway building along its waterfront, raised money and opened the doors on June 25.
Ken Black basked in the glow of a few hundred enthusiastic supporters, deservedly so.
Not all the equipment has been installed yet – it will take until next summer before all the displays are ready.
It takes time to disassemble and reassemble Fresnel lenses, prism by prism.
But the lifetime work of Augustin Fresnel and Ken Black now has a suitable home, and both the collection and the hall are impressive.
Lighthouses and lighthouse keepers helped countless mariners find their way into port, or away from dangerous rocks through the centuries.
We can read about it, but in Rockland, Maine, we can see up close the equipment that was used and get an idea of the work it took to maintain it.
It’s one man’s legacy, his work now being carried on by many others.”

“Nice!!

Did ya find any good rocks there?”

“Pink granite, white granite, pink rhyolite, some to cool down the Balvenie, ahhhh yes.”

“Cool!”

“Last week was in Michigan's UP and visited a number of light houses and the Great Lakes Ship Wreck Museum. Was impressed by the Fresnel and earlier lenses on display. Is there a good place to learn more about them?”

“Google Fresnel lens and you should be able to learn a whole lot, including diagrams of how they bend beams of light, etc.

The s in Fresnel is silent.

The lenses were made in orders, with 1st order being the largest and 4th order just a harbor light. First order lenses can be seen up to 40 miles at sea.

To me it's fascinating, and the lenses I saw in Rockland and at Portland Head were the first chance I've had to actually see them up close. There is no blemish on the glass surface. It is polished smooth.

Harbour Lights makes a replica of a lens that has a little blinking bulb and is powered either by batteries or an adapter. I have one, and it is really neat when the room is dark. Those are available (pricey) at www.lighthousedepot.com, along with lots of other lighthouse junk for the home or office.”

“OK Geo, I would have been dissappointed if you hadn't play with your rocks.”

“I should have figured out where that was headed. Consider the source.”

“Oh, maybe I didn't word that to well.

You've got rocks on your mind, man.”