Gyaat

Monday 13 April 2015

This Bilnd Irish guided the sea way by inventing Screwpile Lighthouse!!!

Alexander Mitchell, (13 April 1780 – 25 June 1868) was an Irish engineer who from 1802 was blind. He is known as the inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse. Mitchell became a brickmaker in Belfast who invented machines used in that trade, and the screw-pile for which he gained some fame. The screw-pile was used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, and employed with great success all over the world from Portland breakwater to Bombay bridges.
A screw-pile lighthouse is a lighthouse which stands on piles that are screwed into sandy or muddy sea or river bottoms. The first screw-pile lighthouse to begin construction was built by blind Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell. Construction began in 1838 at the mouth of the Thames and was known as the Maplin Sands lighthouse, and first lit in 1841. However, though its construction began later, the Wyre Light in Fleetwood, Lancashire, was the first to be lit (in 1840).