In the 18th century, many European lighthouses proved more harmful than helpful to passing ships. Their weak beams, shoddy equipment and inconsistent timing often lured ships nearer to shore, only to have them founder on the rocks. The work of French physicist Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827) proved a crucial development in the science of light and the future of maritime navigation, as Theresa Levitt recounts in A Short Bright Flash.
Trained as an engineer, Fresnel devoted his spare time to physics, including a radical series of experiments on the wavelike behavior of light. Though his findings shocked the French scientific community (where light was still widely believed to be a particle), Fresnel persisted in his research. Eventually, he constructed a new type of lens that used a complex set of prisms to both reflect and refract light. When installed in lighthouses, the beams from his lenses outshone those of competitors by many miles, leading to Fresnel's involvement in France's Lighthouse Commission and his work in lighting the entire French coast.
Fresnel died young, but his brother, Leonor, carried on Augustin's work. Levitt traces the spread of Fresnel's ideas and lenses to England, Scotland and eventually the United States, devoting most of an interesting (if somewhat tangential) chapter to the prominence of lighthouses in the Civil War. Although the politics of lighthouse governance occasionally slow the narrative down, Levitt weaves together science and history to explore the impact of a man who helped light the way for sailors around the world. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams