It is always interesting to hear about the technology in well-known inventions. I was looking for something else when I came across an article from 2003 about Sean Noone and his method of switching street lighting on and off by using the presence or absence of light.
It used to be that lights were switched off when it was broad daylight. Noone was an electronics engineer who had returned to Belmullet in Mayo, Ireland. There was a lot of unemployment after a local factory closed. He learnt that the usual street lighting broke down a lot (possibly connected with commands to turn on and off ?), and devised his Photoelectric control unit with cooling chamber for which he filed a patent in 1984. This is the main drawing.
The patent makes it clear that minimising the need for repair was built in. This technology is used as the standard method in Britain and Ireland, and the company employed 64 people in Belmullet when the article was written.
Dear Mr. van Dulken,
the grandfather of all daylight controlled lights would seem to be Gustaf Dalén's invention for gaslit light buoys:
Abstract of GB 190727024 (A)
27,024. Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator. Dec. 7, 1906. Extinguishing gas.-Gas lamps, such as buoy and lighthouse lamps, are extinguished in broad daylight by the unequal expansion of two or more solid, liquid, or gaseous bodies under the influence of radiant heat.
Dalén was a very interesting character indeed. He became blind after an acetylene gas explosion, he developed the filling for gas bottles that made the gas safe, and he invented the AGA cooker. This only survives in the U.K. The first generation was imported and metric; Rayburn's models are, as far as I know, based on inches.
Kind regards,
George Brock-Nannestad
[This patent can be seen at http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=190727024A&KC=A&FT=D&date=19080423&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP -- Ed.]
Posted by: George Brock-Nannestad | 03 September 2009 at 17:14