LODE and Re:LODE
visual communication and the speed of light
Bidston Hill, the Lighthouse and the Observatory, have been of significant interest to Philip Courtenay for the last ten years as an historical as well geographical situation.
The first opportunity for Philip Courtenay to visit the Lighthouse and to meet Stephen Pickles, the occupant and curator of this historic place, was on 26th January 2016. I was not alone, as Sam Skinner had arranged this visit and a meeting with Stephen Pickles, and I joined Mike Stubbs and Thiago Hersan as guests of Bidston Lighthouse to discuss things artistic and things to do with communication and the history of telecommunications.
Photos of Stephen's guided tour of the Lighthouse 26th January 2016
So, the sight of a flag being raised on a flagpole on Bidston Hill means information travels at the speed of light from Bidston to Liverpool.
Bidston Hill, the Lighthouse and the Observatory, have been of significant interest to Philip Courtenay for the last ten years as an historical as well geographical situation.
The first opportunity for Philip Courtenay to visit the Lighthouse and to meet Stephen Pickles, the occupant and curator of this historic place, was on 26th January 2016. I was not alone, as Sam Skinner had arranged this visit and a meeting with Stephen Pickles, and I joined Mike Stubbs and Thiago Hersan as guests of Bidston Lighthouse to discuss things artistic and things to do with communication and the history of telecommunications.
Photos of Stephen's guided tour of the Lighthouse 26th January 2016
The photo shows Stephen's display showing a representation of the flag and signal system that was established on Bidston Hill using more than100 flagpoles.
Most were erected between the lighthouse and the windmill but there were a further 8 flagpoles on the other side of the lighthouse which were reserved for the British Admiralty and Excise Services. In 1763 a signalling station was built near to the location of the modern day lighthouse and functioned using the flagpoles as a complicated early warning system. As merchant ships rounded the Point of Ayr or sailed past Formby Point the ship would be spotted and identified. Flag runners were employed to watch for ships and had 11 minutes to raise the correct company’s flag on the right pole, followed by the correct cargo flag. This enabled supervisors in the docks to ready their work force to unload the ship (and it meant the workers would be paid only for the time they spent working). Each flagpole was 30 ft (9.14 m) tall and made of Baltic Pine.
So, the sight of a flag being raised on a flagpole on Bidston Hill means information travels at the speed of light from Bidston to Liverpool.
This is part of the history of tele-communications.
In 1826 the system was updated when the Telegraph Station was built next to the Lighthouse. The Telegraph Station was part of the Liverpool to Holyhead telegraph, a chain of semaphore signals that ran from Liverpool along the North Wales coast to Anglesey. A message could be relayed from Holyhead to Liverpool (or vice versa) in just a few minutes. The Liverpool to Holyhead telegraph was the first telegraph intended primarily for commercial and private correspondence. The semaphore-based telegraph was eventually replaced by an electric telegraph in 1861.
At the top of the Lighthouse is the lamp room. This space was designed to shine a light out to sea, a light that travels at the speed of light.
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its exact value is 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 3.00×108 m/s, or 186,282 mi/s); it is exact because the unit of length, the metre, is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.
Leading Lights - Looking out in the direction of Leasowe Lighthouse - for ships coming into Liverpool lining up the the lights of Bidston Lighthouse and Leasowe Lighthouse point the way to a safe channel to steer by all the way into port.
This is the second lighthouse to be built on Bidston Hill. Its construction was completed in 1873.
The new lighthouse was equipped with a state-of-the-art first-order dioptric lens with vertical condensing prisms, manufactured by Chance Bros of Birmingham. The light cost more than the tower which housed it. The electric telegraph is now directed from a dedicated signals room, beneath the lamp room.
The first Lighthouse on Bidston Hill was built in 1771, further from the body of water it lit than any other lighthouse in the world, ever. The octagonal tower housed a massive parabolic reflector, twelve feet in diameter, developed at the Bidston Signals Station by William Hutchinson, Liverpool Harbour Master and one-time privateer.
The lens technology developed in this place was ground-breaking. The visual communication technology involving flags, optics, flag codes and signals moved to a semaphore and visual telegraph that could send a message from Holyhead Mountain to Liverpool in a few blinks of an eye.
“Last week the Liverpool Telegraph communicated to Holyhead, a distance of 156 miles, and received an answer in the extraordinary short space of 35 seconds”, reported the Public Ledger and Daily Advertisor on 28 Sep 1829.
The views to the left and to the right as you stand facing Liverpool Bay include the LODE Line, and the resulting Zone of Interest.
Looking west south west
Looking east north east
The LODE Zone now - communication now
Sight-lines and visual communication meant that information could be instantaneously transmitted over distance. Knowledge of what was happening elsewhere, beyond the horizon, became available, maybe transformed, maybe transmuted, but in a world where knowledge is power, advanced knowledge results in the potential increase of that power.
