How does a lighthouse helps ships navigating?
In: Engineering
A ship approaching the shore at night, in fog, or in a storm might not know exactly how far it is to the shore. Or precisely where some nasty rocks on the map are relative to where the ship is (because they had no way of knowing exactly where the ship was). A lighthouse would be the first thing ships saw as they approached the shore, and would warn them to at the very least veer away from the lighthouse.
It was just a signal, the light didn’t actually reveal anything other than where the shore or hazardous rocks were. It didn’t aid navigation, other than showing the ships where to *not* go once they were close enough to see the lighthouse.
Nowadays they are still useful in some places, particularly in foggy areas where you can’t see anything, but other technologies like GPS and SONAR and RADAR – and *much* better maps – are better able to tell you where you are, where the land is, and where any dangerous rocks might be. But back in the mists of time they were the *only* way of keeping ships off of the rocks.
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