A SECOND SUN
The great Egyptologist John Gardner Wilkinson pointed out that the ancient Egyptian "paintings offer few representations of lamps, torches, or any other kind of light." Why--when they illustrate almost every other ancient Egyptian article? It is because people are not looking for ancient electric lights so they simply do not recognize them! But The Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting adequately points them out.
This book presents an easily readable explanation of carbon arc lights and a history of their use in nineteenth and twentieth-century searchlights (electric mirrors) and lighthouses. Its numerous illustrations, explanations, and historical testimony (from the horses' mouths) set a firm foundation for the reader to better understand the ancient advancements in electricity.
“Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the possibility, if not the certainty, that the alleged discovery was not totally unknown to the ancients,” declared Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in Volume I of Isis Unveiled in 1871. “It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolomaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for the lack of proofs to the contrary.”
This book presents an easily readable explanation of carbon arc lights and a history of their use in nineteenth and twentieth-century searchlights (electric mirrors) and lighthouses. Its numerous illustrations, explanations, and historical testimony (from the horses' mouths) set a firm foundation for the reader to better understand the ancient advancements in electricity.
“Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the possibility, if not the certainty, that the alleged discovery was not totally unknown to the ancients,” declared Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in Volume I of Isis Unveiled in 1871. “It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolomaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for the lack of proofs to the contrary.”
We are sure by now that you have noticed that the editor, also the author, of The Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting (Larry Brian Radka) has carefully laid out the ancient and modern illustrations (often in a comparative manner) on the appropriate pages that match up well with the text. Although this was time-consuming, it means readers are not distracted by having to leap back and forth between the text and a bunch of pictures stuck in various parts of The Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting.
