Lighthouses Around The World

Lighthouses were extremely labour intensive in the classic era of lighthouse operation. Lighthouse keepers were needed to trim the wicks, replenish fuel, wind clockworks and perform maintenance tasks such as cleaning lenses and windows. In 1907, Nils Gustaf Dalén produced the sun valve which turned the beacon on and off using daylight. The first one was erected on Furuholmen’s lighthouse between Stockholm and Vaxholm. In 1912 Dalén was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of 'automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses'.
Dalén's inventions, electrification and automatic lamp changers began to make lighthouse keepers obsolete. For many years, lighthouses still had keepers, partly because lighthouse keepers could serve as a rescue service if necessary. Improvements in maritime navigation and safety such as GPS have led to the phasing out of non-automated lighthouses, with the last keepers removed in the 1990s.