The History of Creation of Conveyable Lighting Tower
Who invented the 1st conveyable lighting tower?
This depends principally on your definition of a lighting tower. A detailed definition may include something as easy as a candle or primitive torch placed on a tall mast to cast light over a big area, such a device has likely been in use since the Stone Age.
In more up to date history it’s un-clear as to when the modern lighting tower was invented. Researching patent applications suggests that machines not dissimilar to today’s lighting towers were being designed in the 1930s.
A patent from 1932 shows what might be the first machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a Portable floodlighting unit for airfields.
The patent describes a frame with 4 wheels at every corner ( allowing the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one giant electrical lamp at every end of the vehicle. The machine is designed to be used to provide on-demand lighting of alternative landing sites at airports on occasions when the main landing areas are out of use due to harsh weather conditions.
More lately in 1980 a US patent 4181929 was filed for a Portable illuminating tower that illustrates a much closer resemblance to modern day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a conveyable lighting tower composed from a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with two electrical lamps at the higher end. The unit doesn’t permit towing but instead is lightweight and compact enough to be easily transported. The design also includes jack legs that are now common place on all lighting towers to ensure stability in high winds.
This is reasonably a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent mostly forms the foundation of most current day lighting towers which contain similar elements such as a base that stores the engine and generator together with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The subsequent patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for a solution to provide more in depth illumination. The US patent 4220981 describes a frame with four wheels to hold the generator and engine and two folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the framework that each hold a cluster of electric lamps. The design also permits for the masts to be rotated enabling finer control over the area of illumination. By offering 2 masts the light tower also allows for illumination over nearly all sides of the machine. This is not like previous light towers which often offer illumination on only one side of the machine.
Since 1980 considerable progress has been made by lighting tower makers. Although the overall design has sundry tiny from those seen in the 1980s many improvements have been made to make lighting towers simpler to use and more environmentally friendly.
The Hylite lighting tower from Taylor Construction Plant includes Adjustabeam technology which allows the user to adjust the direction of each lamp from the ground. The TCP Hylite also has a flexible frame design which allows almost any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower in addition has damaged new ground by utilising highly cheap lamps to reduce fuel consumption seriously, which is particularly timely seeing as global warming is starting to become a more and more common concern.
There’s a lot of information on this topic online, so you can get more of it if you want, and you can watch grey’s anatomy season 6 episode 16 or survivor: heroes vs villains season 20 episode 4 meantime.
Tags: lighting, lighting tower