Say not of me that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded and the lamps we lit…
—Robert Louis Stevenson’s apologia for deserting the family business of lighthouse-building
On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses
#RobertLouisStevenson
“One advantage of the method that I propose is this, that while we are able to produce a plain intermittent light; an intermittent light of variable period, ranging from a brief flash to a steady illumination of half the revolution…”
One of Stevenson’s lesser-known publications, submitted to the Board of Northern Lights, 1870
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #lighthouse #engineering
https://digital.nls.uk/rlstevenson/browse/archive/99383648
This poem accompanied Stevenson’s paper “On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses” …