See also:
Coastal Zones
Beaches
Hurricanes
An aid for navigation and pilotage at sea, a lighthouse is a tower building or framework sending out light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire. Lighthouses also provide coordinate location for small aircraft traveling at night. More primitive navigational aids were once used such as a fire on top of a hill or cliff.
Because of modern navigational aids, the number of operational lighthouses has declined to less than 1,500 worldwide. Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals away from the coast, and safe entries to harbors.
Perhaps the most famous lighthouse in history is the Lighthouse of Alexandria, built on the island of Pharos in ancient Egypt. The name of the island is still used as the noun for "lighthouse" in some languages, for example: French (phare), Italian and Spanish (faro), Portuguese (farol), Romanian (far). The word "pharology" (study of the lighthouses), is also derived from the island's name.
[more..]
|
