Sound: A Course of Eight Lectures

Major Elliott, the accomplished officer and gentleman mentioned on page 261, had published a record of his inspection visit to this country. In it, he spoke with a clear and enlightened understanding of the facts regarding the differences between our system of lighthouse illumination and that of the United States. He also included in his report an account of the investigation into fog signals, the start of which he had witnessed—and indeed assisted with—at the South Foreland South Foreland is a cliff on the Kent coast of England, site of a significant lighthouse used for Tyndall's acoustic experiments..

On this skilled report by their own officer, the Lighthouse Board at Washington made the following remark: "Although this account is interesting in itself and to the general public, yet, because it is addressed to the Lighthouse Board of the United States, it would tend to suggest the idea that the facts it states were new to the Board, and that the latter had obtained no results of a similar kind. However, a reference to the appendix of this report¹ will show that the research of our Lighthouse Board has been much more extensive on this subject than those of the Trinity House The Trinity House is the official authority for lighthouses and maritime safety in England and Wales., and that the latter has established no facts of practical importance which had not been previously observed and used by the former."

The "appendix" referred to here was written by the venerable Professor Joseph Henry, chairman of the Lighthouse Board at Washington. It should be recorded to his credit that at a very early period in the history of fog signaling, Professor Henry reported in favor of Daboll’s trumpet A powerful fog-signal device that used compressed air to vibrate a large metal reed inside a trumpet, invented by Celadon Daboll.. He did this even though he was opposed by one of his colleagues on the grounds that "fog signals were of little importance, since the mariner should know his position by the character of his—"

¹ It should be kept in mind that the Washington Appendix was published nearly a year after my report to the Trinity House.