The History of Invention of Conveyable Lighting Tower
Who invented the 1st cartable lighting tower?
This depends principally on your definition of a lighting tower. A detailed definition could include something as simple as a candle or primitive torch placed on a tall mast to cast light over a large area, such a device has likely been in use since the Stone Age.
In more current 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 transportable floodlighting unit for airports.
The patent describes a framework with 4 wheels at each corner ( allowing the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one giant electrical lamp at each end of the vehicle. The machine is intended to be used to provide on-demand lighting of alternative landing sites at airfields on occasions when the main landing areas are out of use because of harsh weather conditions.
More recently in 1980 a US patent 4181929 was filed for a Portable illuminating tower that illustrates a much closer similarity to modern day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a cartable lighting tower consisting of a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with 2 electrical lamps at the higher end. The unit does not permit towing but instead is light and compact enough to be simply transported. The design also includes jack legs that are now common place on all lighting towers to guarantee stability in high winds.
This is kind of a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent mostly forms the root of most modern day lighting towers which contain similar elements such as a base that stores the engine and generator 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 4 wheels to hold the generator and engine and 2 folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the framework that each hold a cluster of electric lamps. The design also allows for the masts to be revolved enabling finer control of the area of illumination. By offering two masts the light tower also allows for illumination over just about all sides of the machine. This isn’t like previous light towers which sometimes offer illumination on only 1 side of the machine.
Since 1980 substantial progress has been manufactured by lighting tower makers. Although the overall design has sundry tiny from those seen in the 1980s many enhancements have been made to make lighting towers simpler to use and more green.
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 chassis design which allows virtually any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower in addition has damaged new ground by using extremely cheap lamps to reduce fuel consumption seriously, which is especially 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 american idol season 9 episode 18 or the mentalist season 2 episode 15 meantime.
Tags: lighting, lighting tower