Sound: A Course of Eight Lectures

...pathize with the desire of the Elder Brethren The senior members of the Trinity House, the official authority for lighthouses and maritime safety in England and Wales. to encourage the inventor who first made the magneto-electric light An early form of electric arc lamp powered by a generator; Tyndall refers here to Frederick Hale Holmes. available for lighthouse purposes. I consider his help and advice to be, in many ways, invaluable to the Corporation. However, no matter how original he may be, it is our duty to demand that his genius be focused on making improvements upon what has already been achieved elsewhere. If the whistles and horns that we heard on the 19th and 20th are the very best built so far, then my requirements have already been met. But if they are not—and I strongly suspect they are not—then I would argue that we must have the best, and aim to make the South Foreland A prominent chalk headland on the Kent coast of England, overlooking the Strait of Dover., in terms of both light and sound, a station that is not surpassed by any other in the world.”

In this regard, I am pleased to say that I never had any disagreement with the Elder Brethren. They agreed with me; consequently, two powerful steam whistles—one from Canada and the other from the United States—along with a steam siren original: "steam-syren"; a powerful fog signal that produces sound by interrupting a jet of steam with a rotating perforated disk. (also an American instrument), were eventually installed at the South Foreland. As will be seen in Chapter VII, my strongest recommendation is for an instrument that we owe to the United States.

Given these facts, it should not be assumed that I wish to deny the Lighthouse Board of Washington any credit they may fairly claim. My goal is to be perfectly fair; however, this desire forces me to state that their report fails to prove the excessive claim made in its first paragraph. While the report contains observations, they are contradictory; as for establishing any scientific principle that might resolve these conflicting results, it leaves our understanding unimproved.