cover image A Short Bright Flash: 
Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse

A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse

Theresa Levitt. Norton, $25.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-393-06879-5

University of Mississippi history professor Levitt details the birth and golden age of a maritime icon in this fascinating book. The story starts in France in the early 1800s with physicist Augustin Fresnel, who countered the shortcomings of mirror-equipped lighthouses (half of the light is absorbed rather than reflected) by inventing an ingeniously designed lens that would bend the light from a source into a far-reaching beam. The first practical method for lighting the wine-dark sea was installed in 1823 on the coast of France at the elaborate Cordouan lighthouse—the “Versailles of the sea”—which had previously been lit by a simple pile of burning wood. Levitt then turns her attention stateside, where economic, social, and cultural barriers initially delayed the adoption of the technology. By 1859, however, nearly every American lighthouse sported a Fresnel lens. Shortly thereafter, during the Civil War, the enlightenment of the heretofore obscure coast would revolutionize naval warfare and harbor defense. Levitt’s study covers a short time span, but like a Fresnel lens to light, she bends plenty of material into this illuminating history of what one paper of the day poetically called “a manufacture from which emanate the useful and the beautiful as kindred and inseparable spirits.” 60 illus. & 6 maps. (June)