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Updated: June 19, 2025
It is built up of planes and prisms of the finest flint glass, cut and assembled according to abtruse mathematical calculations so as to gather the rays of light from the great sperm-oil lamp into parallel rays, a solid beam, which, in the case of Minot's Ledge light, pierces the night to a distance of fifteen miles.
At the Isle of May and Inchkeith the quantity of sperm-oil consumed by the great lamp is equal to that burned by fourteen of the Argand lamps used in the Scotch lights.
The other ships now had their boats in the water, and as Captain Coffin saw them approach he called to his officers: "Don't let the Nantucketers beat us! They are regular sharks after sperm-oil, but we have four whales the best of them now. Every man here must strike his fish to-day."
In the lighthouses of this country sperm-oil is the most usual fuel. In France an oil is burned called Colza oil, expressed from the seeds of a species of wild cabbage. In the lighthouses on the Mediterranean olive-oil is used. In a few lighthouses near large towns coal-gas has been advantageously adopted.
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