The History of Creation of Portable Lighting Tower
Who invented the 1st portable lighting tower?
This depends mostly on your definition of a lighting tower. An extensive definition may include something as straightforward as a candle or primitive torch placed on a tall mast to cast light over a big area, such a device has doubtless been in use since the Stone Age.
In more current history it’s un-clear as to when the modern lighting tower was invented. Researching patent applications reveals that machines not dissimilar to today’s lighting towers were being designed in the 1930s.
A patent from 1932 shows what could be the 1st machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a movable floodlighting unit for airports.
The patent describes a chassis with 4 wheels at every corner ( permitting the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one massive electrical lamp at every end of the vehicle. The machine is intended to be used to provide on-demand lighting of alternative landing sites at airports on occasions when the main landing areas are out of use due to inclement weather conditions.
More recently in 1980 a US patent 4181929 was filed for a Portable illuminating tower that illustrates a much nearer similarity to present day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a cartable lighting tower composed of a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with 2 electric lamps at the upper end. The unit doesn’t permit towing but instead is light and compact enough to be simply transported. The design also includes jack legs that are now common place on all lighting towers to ensure stability in gusty winds.
This is reasonably a big development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent principally forms the root of most present day lighting towers which contain similar elements such as a base that stores the engine and generator with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The next patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for an answer to provide more extensive illumination. The US patent 4220981 describes a framework with four wheels to hold the generator and engine and 2 folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the frame that each hold a cluster of electrical lamps. The design also allows for the masts to be rotated enabling finer control over the area of illumination. By offering 2 masts the light tower also allows for illumination over nearly every side of the machine. This isn’t like prior light towers which generally offer illumination on just one side of the machine.
Since 1980 considerable progress has been manufactured by lighting tower manufacturers. Although the overall design has sundry small from those seen in the 1980s many improvements have been made to make lighting towers simpler to use and more environmentally friendly.
The Hylite lighting tower from Taylor Construction Plant includes Adjustabeam technology which permits the user to adjust the direction of each lamp from the ground. The TCP Hylite also has a flexible framework design which permits almost any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower in addition has broken new ground by utilising extremely cheap lamps to reduce fuel consumption significantly, which is particularly timely seeing as global warming is starting to become a more and more common concern.
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