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Pictures and Electricity History of Carbon Arc Searchlights or Electric Mirrors  Carbon arc searchlight images and titles below lead to the rest of the stories on these electric mirrors: Ancient American electric searchlight technology and other incandescent lighting progressed throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century; but technology in electric searchlights had originated in ancient India and elsewhere. In this excerpt from “Electricity in Naval Warfare,” an article in the October, 1889 issue of Schribner’s Magazine, U. S. Navy Lieutenant W. S. Hughes updates us on some of the current details of the naval progress in electric searchlights, which was widely displayed four years later at Chicago’s World Fair: . . . Electric carbon arc searchlights have been illuminating battlefields ever since they were reinvented over 150 years ago. Captain Brittes of the French Army experimented with them in 1851, and primitive searchlight warfare was tried by the Russians in the Crimean War (1853-1856) at Sevastopol. The French fleet also experimented with a searchlight at the siege of Kinburn, during the Baltic campaign; and General Menabrea used one, which shot out a beam of light 1,500 meters, in a campaign against the king of Naples in 1861. Three sets of early pattern searchlights were later used on the British march to Magdala, in the Abyssinian war of 1868. They cost the considerable sum of three hundred and fifty pounds each, and cast their beams a mile and a half away. . . .  One of the oldest signal lights flashed out messages of impending attack by a powerful searchlight light beam atop the ancient lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt before, in 1892, an electric carbon arc searchlight was used for an entirely different purpose—to forecast the weather. . . .  Electric searchlights have been illuminating battlefields ever since they were reinvented over 150 years ago. Captain Brittes of the French Army experimented with them in 1851, and primitive searchlight warfare was tried by the Russians in the Crimean War (1853-1856) at Sevastopol. The French fleet also experimented with a searchlight at the siege of Kinburn, during the Baltic campaign; and General Menabrea used one, which shot out a beam of light 1,500 meters, in a campaign against the king of Naples in 1861. Three sets of early pattern searchlights were later used on the British march to Magdala, in the Abyssinian war of 1868. They cost the considerable sum of three hundred and fifty pounds each, and cast their beams a mile and a half away. Shortly thereafter, searchlights were employed in the Franco-Prussian war, in the defense of Paris. Searchlight stations employing carbon arc lights were installed in various forts circling the city, and each was maintained by four electricians with equipment gathered from instrument makers, telegraph offices, and laboratories. Electric batteries (Bunsen cells) powered most of the searchlights. However, one of the brightest light projectors, at Moulin de la Galette, was powered by an Alliance electro-magneto generator, similar to the one powering the arc light illustrated below. The searchlights were often effective in preventing surprise attacks and discouraged sappers during the night. . . .  This book aims to prove—through a comprehensive layout of ancient coins, artifacts, monuments, and literature—that the ancients used electricity to light up their temples, tombs, lighthouses, fortresses, palaces, cities and other edifices and critical areas. No other work on the subject documents as much ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Indian, Greek, Roman, Parthian, Persian, and Sassanian as well as medieval evidence of the fact. Furthermore, the work recalls interesting details and descriptions (some of which have never before been translated into English) of the ancient Alexandrian Pharos Lighthouse and its reflective telescope and electric beacon. It also describes modern carbon arc lights and presents a history of their use in nineteenth and twentieth-century searchlights (electric mirrors) and lighthouses. Its numerous illustrations, explanations, and historical testimony (eyewitness testimony) are enough to convince any reader that the ancients were well acquainted with electric lighting. . . . Some of the most wicked weather in the United States can occur on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, so manning the meteorological station on that windy elevation at 6286 feet can be life-threatening. Winds exceeding hurrican force occur an average of 110 days per year, and a surface wind speed of 231 miles per hour (372 km/h) was recorded on the afternoon of April 12, 1934. Sub zero temperatures are common in winter, and a record low of -47 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded on the 29th of January 1934. Buildings are chained to the ground to prevent them from blowing away. . . . Sandy Hook Searchlight Sandy Hook may have seen a large carbon arc searchlight at one time. “A BIG SEARCHLIGHT—To be Mounted at Sandy Hook for Army Experiments” is the title of an interesting article published by The New York Times on December 31, 1893. The piece reads as follows: . . . Searchlights have been beaming forth from lighthouses and illuminating battlefields since ancient times. The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria serves as an example of their use in antiquity. “That the Pharos was used as a signal-station as well as a lighthouse is certain,” wrote Dr. A. J. Butler, “and at the time of the Arab conquest it was in full working order and flashed the sun by day and its own fire by night many leagues over the sea.” He went on to claim in his well-documented work titled The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of Roman Dominion that it was a “conspicuous landmark visible by day and by night at a distance of sixty or seventy miles.” At night, electricity, generating a brilliant carbon arc searchlight beam that bounced off the distant clouds, is what made the Pharos's light so conspicuous at an over-the-horizon "distance of sixty or seventy miles." Much more evidence for electric carbon arc searchlight use in antiquity is provided in Larry Brian Radka's Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting. . . .
 World War I soon followed, and the need for searchlights became apparent, to spot the enemy on land, at sea, and in the sky. It may sound fantastic but "The first pitched battle has recently been fought between ships of the sea and of the air, resulting in the annihilation of a British submarine by a Zeppelin bomb," stated an article titled "A Submarine Sunk by a Zeppelin," in the June 12, 1915 issue of Scientific American. "A submarine flotilla's numerous high angle guns are not so much smaller than those of a battleship," added the writer, "yet the target offered by the single submarine is so hopelessly tiny that the Zeppelin's escape after sinking one of her foes with a bomb appears nothing short of marvelous, if we recall the difficulty of dropping bombs with precision and the accuracy of high angle fire so far experienced." . . . For more on old carbon arc searchlights, see The Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting.
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