History of lighthouses with demands, and to the loss of a number of ships, most notably the Dutch merchant ship Vreede in 1800 with the loss of 380 lives. After the reforms of the Lighthouse Act 1836, owners still managed to collect large dues, of which the largest were for the Smalls Lighthouse which collected £23,000 in 1852 and Trinity House was forced to spend over £1m in buying back leases, including £444,000 for the Skerries Lighthouse. The modern era of lighthouses began at the turn of the 18th century, as lighthouse construction boomed in lockstep with burgeoning levels of transatlantic commerce. Advances
History of lighthouses the light to operate only at night, conserving fuel, and extending their service life to over a year. The AGA lighthouse equipment worked without any type of electric supply and was thus extremely reliable. To a rugged coastal area like Scandinavia, his mass-produced, robust, minimal maintenance lights were a significant boon to safety and livelihood. AGA Lighthouses covered the entire Panama Canal. The technology was the predominant form of light source in lighthouses from the 1900s through the 1960s, when electric lighting had become dominant. The first electrically illuminated lighthouse was the tower at Dungeness, Kent in 1862. It was