The History of Invention of Conveyable Lighting Tower
Who invented the first conveyable lighting tower?
This depends principally on your definition of a lighting tower. A broad definition could include something as easy as a candle or primitive torch placed on a tall mast to cast light over a big area, such a device has likely been used since the Stone Age.
In more up to date history it’s un-clear as to when the modern lighting tower was invented. Researching patent applications indicates that machines not dissimilar to today’s lighting towers were being designed in the 1930s.
A patent from 1932 shows what could be the 1st machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a Portable floodlighting unit for airports.
The patent describes a chassis with 4 wheels at each corner ( permitting the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one large electrical lamp at every end of the vehicle. The machine is intended to be used to provide on-demand lighting of alternative landing sites at airfields on occasions when the main landing areas are out of use because of harsh weather conditions.
More recently in 1980 a US patent 4181929 was filed for a Portable illuminating tower that illustrates a much closer similarity to modern day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a cartable lighting tower composed of a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with 2 electric lamps at the higher end. The unit doesn’t permit towing but instead is lightweight and compact enough to be simply transported. The design also includes jack legs that are now common place on all lighting towers to guarantee stability in high winds.
This is reasonably a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent mostly forms the root of most modern day lighting towers which contain similar elements like a base that stores the engine and generator along with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The following patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for a solution to provide more in depth illumination. The US patent 4220981 describes a chassis with 4 wheels to hold the generator and engine and 2 folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the chassis that each hold a cluster of electrical lamps. The design also permits for the masts to be rotated enabling finer control over the area of illumination. By offering two masts the light tower also allows for illumination over nearly every side of the machine. This is unlike prior light towers which sometimes offer illumination on only one side of the machine.
Since 1980 considerable progress has been made by lighting tower manufacturers. Although the final design has sundry little from those seen in the 1980s many enhancements have been made to make lighting towers better to use and more environmentally friendly.
The Hylite lighting tower from Taylor Construction Plant includes Adjustabeam technology which permits the user to adjust the direction of each lamp from the ground. The TCP Hylite also has a flexible chassis design which permits just about any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower has additionally broken new ground by exploiting highly cost-effective lamps to reduce fuel consumption dramatically, which is very timely seeing as global warming is starting to become a more and more plentiful concern.
There’s a lot of information on this topic online, so you can get more of it if you want, and you can watch nova season 37 episode 6 or the mentalist season 2 episode 15 meantime.
Tags: lighting, lighting tower