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Lighthouses - Race to Illuminate the World by Toby Chance and Peter Williams. Price £17.99 + P&P
James Chance, who was born five years before Fresnel published his dioptric designs, spent his formative years contemplating a life in robes – either in the law courts or the church. But while at Cambridge his intellectual curiosity had been ignited by the radical changes occurring in mathematics and physics, and within a year of joining the family firm he had applied these talents to the invention and patenting of a process that massively increased the production of plate glass at Chance Brothers.
He personified the hope of Albion, not because of his abilities in pure science but rather because of his aptitude in optical engineering – at the time an undervalued branch of knowledge, though events were soon to change that. This was to propel the family firm to a position of world leadership in glass manufacture and lighthouse production and enable a British firm to compete effectively with the French for the first time.
Rivalries between the great powers was manifested in their industrial and commercial achievements. How could the fruits of science be applied to the design and building of machines? The British inferiority complex in the field of science was not paralleled in manufacturing! There seemed to be a disconnect between the world of academe and the factory floor and draftsman’s office. English society scorned business and manufacture yet some great inventions emerged that led England in the industrial revolution. France and Germany excelled at pure science but England excelled at manufacture – do the facts support this contention?
So the "Race to Illuminate the World" was on written from the perspective of Toby Chance, the grandson of the last Chairman of Chance Brothers Ltd of Smethwick, near Birmingham, and Peter Williams, editor, writer and lighthouse attendant (St.Ann's Head Lighthouse).
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