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."
A French searchlight crew spotting a German Zepplin during World War I
A German searchlight crew patrolling the coast of Flanders during World War I
An early twentieth-century imgae of New York's
"Great White Way." Broadway is on the left.
A carbon arc aerial beacon flashing atop an American skyscraper like the one above was a mesmerizing site in the first half of the twentieth-century. The advertisement enhanced the building’s stature, attracted tourists, brought in business, and served as a useful aerial marker. The brilliant arc light occasionally lit up a passing airplane, which only added spark to America’s growing fascination with flight.
Another good example of a city lighthouse was the celebrated Lindbergh Beacon, flashing atop Chicago’s Palmolive Building on North Michigan Avenue. Elmer A. Sperry, developer of both a high-intensity electric arc lamp and gyroscopic compass used in air navigation, donated the memorial in honor of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic. The beacon consisted of two electric mirrors, thirty-six inch diameter parabolic reflectors, which generated two brilliant beams, one with 2 billion and the other with 1.1 billion candlepower. The lesser searchlight beam continuously pointed to the city’s municipal airport, while the stronger revolved at two revolutions per minute and was visible for upwards of 100 miles.
The world’s most powerful searchlight today sends out a shaft of light straight up from the top of the pyramid-shaped Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Its beam is so powerful that it is visible from space.
Searchlights atop a British battleship in the harbor of Saloniki, Greece in WWI
A photograph of a searchlight on a fire boat in the early 1900's.
A World War I German crew with their searchlight
mounted on telescoping poles
Picture of the searchlight beams from the great scintillator
at San Francisco's Pan Pacific Exposition of 1915
A World War I searchlight mounted on a pole to light up a night attack
American anti-aircraft searchlight positions on the Western Front in WW I
A French World War I vintage command-post anti-aircraft searchlight
The American standard field searchlight vehicle and its power unit of the 1920's
The above type of searchlight was probably very similar some of the searchlights used in World War I, judging by an article written at the time. "Every army engaged in the titantic struggle in Europe, from the smallest to the largest, is plentifully supplied with mobile searchlight equipments that can be posted at any spot," reported the December 4, 1915 issue of Scientific American. "In the majority of instances the searchlight equipments consist of an automobile truck carrying a generator that is driven from the vehicle's engine, and the searchlight mounted on a small four-wheeled carriage, permitting of its removal from the automobile truck and of wheeling it to a spot several hundred feet away that may be inaccessible to the larger vehicle. In the more improved forms of transportable searchlights, the projectors are fitted with a remote control system so that the attendant, standing perhaps twenty or more feet distant, can, by means of a small control board held in the hands, direct and alter the beams. Thus he is not blinded by the terrific glare of the rays, which would be the case were he standing close to the projector. Many of the portable projectors have a range of 5 miles or more."
This searchlight picture above, extracted from Larry Brian Radka's Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting, is an early 1900's aluminum version of a G.E. 36-inch hand controlled high intensity searchlight mounted on a four-wheeled truck for Army use.
A hand-controlled General Electric 24 inch searchlight that was manufactured in its Schenectady, New York factory with the best materials available. "All parts are made to gauge and are interchangeable to facilitate the repair of searchlights," states a 1919 G. E. brochure. "Each searchlight is thoroughly inspected and tested before leaving the factory. The standard finish of all exposed parts is dull black, but other finishes, such as polished brass or slate gray, can be supplied upon special order. The standard searchlights are constructed principally of steel and iron, but non-magnetic materials can be supplied throughout on special orders when it is required to install the searchlight near a compass.
An advetisement in the December 1926 "Christmas issue" of U. S. Air Services
The above is a 1920's photograph of an electric carbon arc searchlight lighting up the Paris airfield as a French Farman "Goliath" lands after a flight from London.
This giant, built by the London Electric Co. of Croyton, England in the 1920's, even seems to have surpassed the size of General Electric's 1904 monster searchlight. In his Encyclopedia of Mechanical Knowledge, Ellison Hawks says, "This searchlight, over 7 ft. in diameter, is over 3,500 million candle power. Every one of its movements can be controlled from the portable controller (right foreground)." The top of this searchlight stood about 14 feet above the narrow gauge railway track it is sitting upon. It was fitted with a parabolic silver-on-glass mirror and high intensity arc, which could be cut off instantly without extinguishing its flame. This made it ideal for signaling purposes. Its arc burned for about two hours without trimming, and a special arrangement of fan-cooling drew off the hot air and gases resulting from the enormous heat it generated. Its beam could be elevated 90 degrees, moved quickly when ranging, and slowly when the object was sighted. These features made this "outsize in searchlights" an excellent tool for anti-aircraft work.
The Wonder Book of Electricity describes the color illustration above as "A Sky Grid." Its editor, Harry Golding, goes on to explain that "The 3,000,000,000 candle-power searchlight throws a 'grid' on the sky by means of which the speed, direction and height of raiding aeroplanes can quickly be calculated. Once caught in the rays, the planes find it almost impossible to escape."
Fifteen years after the date of the Sperry advertisement illustrated above, a 1941 “RESTRICTED” official training film, No. 4-197, put out by the United States War Department, in collaboration with The Chief of Coast Artillery, showed a sixty-isearchlight deployed by the U. S. Army. In the early years of the Second World War, theU. S. government purchased some 10,000 carbon arc searchlights at an average cost of $60,000 apiece. That's an average of over a million dollars apiece in today's dollars.
A ten-man squad operated the 60-inch carbon arc searchlight. Its generator provided 105 lightly loaded volts at 12 amperes for the control unit that positioned the searchlight remotely, although a local extended hand control was available—to allow the operator to stand well away from the blinding beam.
This power was also supplied to the distant, synchronized “sound locator” that determined the speed of an aircraft. When the searchlight’s carbons began blazing away, the D.C. generator voltage dropped to about 77 volts as 150 amperes streamed down the long red cable to its electric mirror that pierced the night sky several miles away.
Click here for a good description of how WWII-era carbon arc searchights were used and the photograph above for a look at Bob Meza's fine restoration of a WWII era carbon arc searchlight.
A World War II era postage stamp with a huge searchlight
and "Gross Deutsches Reich" or "Great German Empire"
"Elephant Child." A World War II British searchlight
of 210,000,000 candlepower
