ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the differential adoption of the first electrical illuminants for lighthouses. These lighting systems employed carbon arcs, the same kind of electric light once found in theater movie projectors and large searchlights. England abandoned its plan to establish 60 electric lighthouses because of high costs, but retained the electric lights at Souter Point and at South Foreland, across from the French cluster on the Strait of Dover. Lighthouse keepers and engineers along with men who manned the tender's ships that carried supplies to lighthouses and the lighthouse board were the relevant social groups. The major pattern in the performance matrix is painfully clear: only in use-related functions-as an aid to navigation and as a beacon of modernity-did the electric light have an advantage. N. J. Allard presented his proposal to the Lighthouse Commission, which accepted it in December of 1880.
