The Lighthouse Work of Sir James T. Chance
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THE LIGHTHOUSE WORK OF SIR JAMES CHANCE, BARONET THE LIGHTHOUSE WORK OF SIR JAMES CHANCE BARONET BY JAMES FREDERICK CHANCE, M.A. WITH A PREFACE BY JAMES KENWARD, C.E., F.S.A. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1902 [All rights reserved] BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE JAMES TIMMINS CHANCE was born on March 22, 1814, being the oldest son of Mr. William Chance, of Birmingham. From an early age he showed evidence of unusual talent, studying with success not only mathematics and natural science, in which subjects he gained high honours at the London University (now University College), but also classics and modern languages, and even Hebrew. At the age of nineteen he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1838 as Seventh Wrangler. He also began the study of law, entering as a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1836. But circumstances obliged him, immediately on leaving Cambridge, to enter the glass- making firm of Chance Brothers & Co., in which his father was a partner, and he remained himself a partner therein for fifty years, being head of it for twenty-five. Apart from this work, he interested himself greatly in social questions, particularly in the promotion of education; and he was a liberal and constant donor in a great many directions, his two principal benefactions being the gift and endow- ment of a public park at West Smethwick and the foundation of the ‘Chance School of Engineering’ at Birmingham University. He was for many years a director of the London and North-Western Railway, Served the office of High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1868, and in later years was a valued member of the Council of University College. He received his baronetcy on the occasion of the last distribution of Birthday Honours by the late Queen. He died at his residence at Hove, Sussex, on January 6, 1902. PREFACE Many an oversea traveler is guided and gladdened on approaching his haven by the great lighthouses that stand as sentinels along the coast, or rise from their rockbase in the water, to indicate his exact position and the proper course of safety. But does he often think of the time when the coast was dark and the approach perilous, or of the gradual growth of the warning signal from the wood-fire in the cresset to the electric arc, whose brilliancy is computed in millions of candles, and whose presence is asserted by reflection on the sky at fifty miles' distance? And, similarly, does it often occur to our traveler, occupied, it may be, with the nearer marvels of mechanism and constructive skill under his eye, how slow must have been the steps of progress, how patient the band of workers in the field of research, ere the results were attained that shine before him with such present splendour afar? The men who have laboured to make our lighthouses and the world's lighthouses worthy to rank with other high developments of modern science and modern art may be few in number, but deserve as full a meed of intelligent approbation as do workers for the good of the community in more extended fields. viii PREFACE Before the era of Augustin Fresnel the latest development in coast illumination was the ‘catoptric' system of metallic reflectors. Fresnel, a bright name in physical science, conceived the application of the law of refraction through glass to the service of the mariner, and the dioptric or lenticular system came into being in 1819, the famed Tour de Cordouan receiving the first installation. The monumental invention of Fresnel was, after his too early death in 1827, perfected, or rather extended, by his brother Leonor, by Degrand, Allard, Bourdelles, and others in France, and in Britain by the distinguished family of Stevenson (Robert, Alan, and Thomas), by Brewster, Airy, Faraday, Thomson, Tyndall, and Hopkinson, and by the subject of the present memoir, who worked in collaboration with some of these, or alone, devoting during many years his high mathematical abilities to the optical side of the task, and his practical sagacity to the whole. The annals of the Trinity House, of the Board of Trade, and of the Admiralty, abundantly record the advisory work of James Timmins Chance, and show how his name is written on many leading lighthouses of his generation. Mention need hardly be made here of the particular ones to which he devoted his talents and his time; yet such lights as those of Great Orme's Head, Europa Point, Wolf Rock, Flamborough Head, Souter Point, and the South Foreland ought to be distinctly remembered. In connection with the work of the latest Royal Commission on Lights, Buoys, and Beacons, his name is not less distinguished than those of Airy and Faraday, as will be seen in the pages that follow. His papers on lighthouse illumination, communicated to the Institution of Civil Engineers, remain valuable textbooks. In the true Miltonic sense, he ‘lived laborious days’ PREFACE ix in study and in business, in science and in mechanical art. Nothing was too remote for his sympathies, nothing too deep for his grasp. He regarded a machine as a problem, and was as ready to perfect the one as to solve the other. The present writer, who worked under him and with him for many years, and who is indebted to him for the greatest part of his own knowledge of lighthouse construction, can well bear testimony to the assiduity with which he followed up every branch of that complex work, the acumen with which he discussed every point, the energy with which he overcame every difficulty. Other labourers in this field may have confined their attention to special questions, but he was able to combine all which had any relation to the desired end. And he retained this interest well- nigh to the last against the tide of advancing years. In the words of Cicero, ' Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti.' It was late in life, not indeed two years before he passed away, that he received the well-deserved honour of a Baronetcy. The delay was primarily his own fault, as he always shrank from obtruding himself or his work on the Government of the day. He could never be induced to enter Parliament, though he fulfilled with great credit the offices of Deputy- Lieutenant, High Sheriff, and Justice of the Peace. His character was one of a conspicuously good English type. He took high honours at Cambridge, and he maintained throughout his life a warm practical interest in public objects, particularly in education. His large gifts and personal efforts made him herein a benefactor in the truest sense, as the University and King Edward's School at Birmingham, University College, London, and the popular schools which he founded at Spon Lane and x PREFACE Oldbury can amply testify. His kindness of heart is shown in his generous treatment of the two thousand work people employed by his firm, and by his splendid gift of a park to the inhabitants of Smethwick and Oldbury. It would seem ungracious to withhold these facts illustrating the private life of Sir James Chance in introducing an account of his labours as a man of science, the more so that his achievements in the improvement of lighthouses were in strict consonance with his lifelong endeavours to promote the happiness and well-being of his fellow-creatures whether on sea or on land. J.K. PORTRAITS SIR JAMES T. CHANCE. frontispiece From a bust by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. 1894. SIR JAMES T. CHANCE. to face p. 7 From a Portrait by J. C. Horsley, 1854. THE LIGHTHOUSE -WORK OF SIR JAMES CHANCE I The luminary in a modern lighthouse is caged in a complex structure of glass lenses and prisms, which collect its divergent rays and concentrate them in beams of intense power upon the horizon and upon those parts of the sea where they will be useful to the mariner. The application of the refractive properties of glass to this purpose was the work of the great French mathematician and physicist, Augustin Fresnel, early in the last century; and the splendid ‘dioptric' instruments of today are developments from his original constructions. The story of their gradual evolution is to be found in well-known text-books on the subject; here it is only desired to leave some record of one of the most industrious and successful builders upon his foundation. 1 1 The fundamental work on the dioptric system of lighthouse illumination is Fresnel's Memoire sur un nouveau systeme d'Eclairage des Phares, read before the French Academy of Sciences on July 29, 1822, and embodying two earlier communications of his to the Commission des Phares in 1819 and 1820. This was followed, when Fresnel's proposals had been thoroughly 2 THE LIGHTHOUSE WORK OF Scientific knowledge and technical skill of a high order are required to construct a dioptric light. The glass-founder, in the first place, must exercise his highest art to produce a colourless glass free from striae and other flaws. Roughly cast in moulds, the lenses and prisms must then have their surfaces accurately ground to particular curvatures, whose calculation is the province of a skilled mathematician. When they have received their final forms, and have been finely polished, they must be fitted into their places with the most scrupulous nicety, in order that the rays falling upon each may be transmitted exactly in the direction required. Then the plans of the engineer must be subordinated to the practical difficulties of working a highly refractory and brittle material, and to the masterful dictates of economy.