Hello, friends. Today there will be another riddle on the topic of atmospheric electricity.
Well, let's start with the fact that thanks to morrisuf I got one interesting document from the American archives. It spoke of France's best practices for the electrification of lighthouses in the 19th century, which were considered outstanding at the time. The document contains a technical description of electrification with many details. Probably, they would be interesting for you too. The text is quite easy to translate. For clarity, let's add a little creativity and remove things that are not related to electricity (description of optical systems, economic justification, etc.), we get something like this document. There will be comments after it.
Promotional video:
Have you read it? Probably, it would not be uninteresting to look at the lighthouses mentioned in this work. Vorontsov lighthouse in Odessa is shown in the main photo. Pay attention to Wikipedia, a bell hangs on its side without any platforms. Who called him and how? Berdyansk lighthouse is also in old photos.
There is no doubt that this is the very same lighthouse, there are many materials that it was here that the rotating light was installed. The lighthouse building itself has generally survived to this day.
Let's compare the old and new photos. Apparently the entire top of the lighthouse has been rebuilt. On the old lighthouse, the cornice and the room for the lanterns look completely different, and in the new version the lighthouse, judging by the size of the windows, is lower in height. A very strange technical solution. Perhaps the military action is to blame. If this post is read by someone from Berdyansk, and has information about such a reconstruction of the lighthouse, please respond.
But now let's compare the American work and the photo of our Berdyansk lighthouse. The main question that arises immediately is how the steam boiler could fit in the building of the lighthouse. Judging by the photo, the building of the lighthouse is about 15 m long, and therefore the description corresponds to it. Lighthouses at that time were made completely autonomous, and it would be technically very inexpedient to move the steam boiler outside. To drive the rotors of the lighthouse generators, one would have to make a transmission from another building, which is not even possible in general. But installing the generators themselves elsewhere would technically represent the same thing. If, in this case, the external power supply of the beacon is made, its autonomy is completely lost. In this case, the boiler room would be attached somewhere on the side, but it would be in the same building as the lighthouse. In the old photo, there is a boiler room in a nearby building,what the standing pipe is talking about. There is no such pipe on the building of the lighthouse. It can be concluded that that boiler room, if it was related to the power supply of the lighthouse, was only as a backup system. So what force then set in motion the rotors of the generators, if they were in the lighthouse building?
Most likely, none, and the generators themselves were not there.
If you look closely, there are ether condensers on the lighthouse building, and on the tower itself there is a dome system. And again we are dealing with the production of atmospheric electricity. There are just two etheric capacitors, according to the number of lamp systems in the lighthouse, the main and the reserve one. And the production scheme itself, most likely, was completely similar to the one described here. And the lighthouse repeated the same fate, namely, its top with metal connections and a dome was completely demolished, and in its place a semblance was built that could never repeat the properties of receiving atmospheric electricity. In the place where the etheric condensers stood, some kind of superstructure was made. This suggests that there were no stoves in that building in that place. The chimney itself is in a different place, obviously, it was made then,when the system for obtaining atmospheric electricity was dismantled. This is roughly the first half of the 20th century. (* - again I remembered someone's statement about the origin of the word careless, namely from the word safe, like a person hoping for something and not building a furnace. And this was hoping for something - what? ether condensers? This is so, by the way).
By the way, take a look at the boiler room. On the roof there is, among other things, some kind of a menorah. Judging by modern photos, this building has also been overhauled.
Here's another example of slight distortions in history and technology. As for the American printed edition, one gets the impression that it was published 50 years later, and most likely instead of some original work, of course, with the removal of "unnecessary" details. I do not know about the technical intelligence of the Americans, but it is not possible for a normal engineer to draw two steam boilers, as they did on the layout of the lighthouse building. Steam boilers, at least, have always been made in a self-contained room, and always separately from generating electrical installations, for obvious reasons. And most likely, in their layouts in the original version there were not steam boilers, but some devices that convert atmospheric electricity into ordinary electricity suitable for consumption by lamps. Perhaps this atmospheric electricity had such energy parameters,which required additional transformation. Maybe they were transformers, maybe Rumkorf coils, maybe something else, history is silent about this. By the way, when stupidly typing the text of the American edition into Google-translate in relation to the steam boilers depicted on the layout, they were literally referred to in the text as "primary tin machines." This can be attributed to the imperfection of the electronic translator, but when I translated foreign articles about illumination, it mentioned some tin ball lanterns. These lanterns, if not read, were the same mysterious sources of electric light in the illuminations of the 18th century. Coincidence?when stupidly typing the text of the American edition into google-translate in relation to the steam boilers shown on the layout, they were literally referred to in the text as "primary tin machines". This can be attributed to the imperfection of the electronic translator, but when I translated foreign articles about illumination, it mentioned some tin ball lanterns. These lanterns, if not read, were the same mysterious sources of electric light in the illuminations of the 18th century. Coincidence?when stupidly typing the text of the American edition into google-translate in relation to the steam boilers shown on the layout, they were literally referred to in the text as "primary tin machines". This can be attributed to the imperfection of the electronic translator, but when I translated foreign articles about illumination, it mentioned some tin ball lanterns. These lanterns, if not read, were the same mysterious sources of electric light in the illuminations of the 18th century. Coincidence?and there were those same mysterious sources of electric light in the illuminations of the 18th century. Coincidence?and there were those same mysterious sources of electric light in the illuminations of the 18th century. Coincidence?
Well, what is it, you decide. All the best.
Addition.
After the release of this article, I found another similar scheme for placing the De Meritens generator inside the lighthouse.
Obviously, in the diagram, a generator drives a steam engine, to which steam is supplied from an adjacent room. Accordingly, there is an exit of condensate through the room, from where it is removed by gravity. In the case of the Berdyansk lighthouse, this is not an option. Firstly, in no old photo there are any objects that look like steam pipelines entering a building. And inside the lighthouse itself, no steam was produced, this is obvious. In addition, steam lines for such distances have not yet been thought of. Pipes are still expensive, there is a risk of the coolant freezing, but this cannot be done underground - the foundation was then made on simple stones. The slightest displacement, and cracks will go through the building. Secondly, condensate drainage is possible only when the building is at a height, near the sea and the climate does not allow negative temperatures. This is not the case on this lighthouse. And no traces of condensate leakage into the sea by gravity are also not visible. Thirdly, a steam boiler of this type needs a fresh water source for recharge. This is clearly not the case on the spit where the lighthouse stands.
The use of a compressor for producing compressed air is not possible here, partly for the same reasons. And the fact of the existence of industrial compressors at that time is in great doubt.
So the conclusions suggest themselves.