I keep reading that lighthouses help sailors 1) be aware of dangers like rocks and reefs, and 2) navigate in the dark. I understand that lighthouses beam a series of flashes that a sailor can see from far away, but I’m not quite sure how seeing a series of flashes in the dark from a single point-source can accomplish point 1 and point 2.
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I would also add that when you’re sailing at night with no moon/obscured moon, you’re basically surrounded by blackness everywhere. You are really driving blind. In pre-gps days, this means that you don’t have your exact location, and you can’t see what’s ahead. Maybe you’ve got a light on your ship that will illuminate a short distance ahead of you, but big ships can take a really long time to stop. In the open sea, this isn’t a big problem because there isn’t much to crash into, but those coastlines can come out of nowhere if you’re not careful. So people decided that the easiest way to solve this problem was to put a goddang big light on the shoreline.
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