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Where was the first lighthouse built according to historical records?

Question #98082. Asked by tragic_flawed.
Last updated Aug 11 2017.

Fosse4
Answer has 7 votes
Fosse4

Answer has 7 votes.
Here in the UK, I suppose the most famous lighthouse would be the Eddystone but there have been 5 of these, all built by different people. The guy who built the first and second Eddystone was Henry Winstanley and he was lost at sea when the worst storm ever recorded swept away the second tower in 1703.

The first lighthouse built on a rock in the open sea became operational on 14 November, 1698, when its architect, Henry Winstanley, climbed up into its lantern and lit 50 tallow candles. There was pandemonium in Plymouth, "seven leagues away", where the locals had said that building a lighthouse on the Eddystone rock would be impossible; a fisherman brought the news to Plymouth that he and fellow mariners were now safe from the dreaded shoals that had cost so many lives. Hundreds climbed the cliffs and used telescopes to see the feeble light.

link https://www.theguardian.com/news/2010/nov/15/weatherwatch-lighthouse-henry-winstanley


Response last updated by gtho4 on Aug 11 2017.
Mar 11 2003, 10:18 PM
Kainantu
Answer has 6 votes
Kainantu

Answer has 6 votes.
The engineer John Smeaton designed and built the Eddystone lighthouse between the years 1756-1759. John Smeaton died at Austhorpe on the 28th of October 1792, and was buried in the old parish church of Whitkirk.

link https://books.google.com/books?id=L9M7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258

The first lighthouse to be erected was that at Kinnaird Head, a light from which was exhibited for the first time on 1 December 1787.

link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinnaird_Head_Lighthouse


Response last updated by gtho4 on Aug 11 2017.
Mar 12 2003, 7:28 AM
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BG07 star
Answer has 11 votes
Currently Best Answer
BG07 star
18 year member
110 replies avatar

Answer has 11 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.
The most famous lighthouse in the world, now destroyed, was the Pharos at Alexandria, formerly on Egypt's Mediterranean coast and designed by Sostrateus of Knidos.
link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria

Response last updated by CmdrK on Aug 10 2017.
Mar 25 2007, 5:01 PM
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Squisher star
Answer has 5 votes
Squisher star
18 year member
109 replies avatar

Answer has 5 votes.
In Egypt. Egyptians were the first people to build lighthouses that used light to guide ships.

link https://rcg.org/youth/odds/0606-wwtli.html

Response last updated by CmdrK on May 24 2017.
Jul 30 2008, 12:30 AM
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Mugaboo
Answer has 6 votes
Mugaboo
21 year member
112 replies avatar

Answer has 6 votes.
In general, the first lighthouses seemed to have been in Lower Egypt. The first specificly mentioned lighthouse was at Sigeum (now part of Turkey).

Lighthouses and structures are, since the Eddystone rock lighthouse, English Channel, 1698, ever more daringly set on rocks at sea. This was not the case in antiquity. In fact the positioning of a few ancient lighthouses puzzles historians so much some doubt they are lighthouses at all.

Typical emplacements include a rock or a promontory, to signal danger or on a harbour natural or artificial entry, indicating a port. Lighthouses are today in general studied as part of port structures. While Eddystone indicates a notoriously, historically famous wrecks' rock, in antiquity a now lost pillar at Cape Sigeum, ancient Licya, Turkey indicated the Dardanelles mouth, in front of Troy.

Some think it was a Lighthouse, others revered it as an hero's tomb. Were it found, it would be the oldest of them all. Some authors think the two uses, tomb and lighthouse could well coincide. They do for the two oldest known extant lighthouses, not in use, the one at Pyrgos (meaning a light) on Thassos island, an inscription on it indicates it was built to use as a lighthouse, one coeval to the Alexandria famed Pharos, 42 kms from it, indicating Taposiris Magna, Cleopatra's favourite residence.

link http://www.arigenova.it/wail/Articoli/Pharology.pdf


Response last updated by gtho4 on Aug 11 2017.
Jul 30 2008, 5:27 AM
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zbeckabee star
Answer has 6 votes
zbeckabee star
Moderator
19 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 6 votes.
The world's first recorded lighthouse, a 450-foot tower called the Pharos of Alexandria and built in Egypt around 300 B.C., was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World."

link http://www.flheritage.com/archaeology/underwater/maritime/lighthouses/lighthouses.cfm

link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharos_of_Alexandria

Jul 30 2008, 9:06 AM
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