Describes the life of the man who invented a new lighthouse lens, capable of shining brighter, farther, and more efficiently than existing light sources, and hi

"What Moby-Dick is to whales, Brilliant Beacons is to lighthouses—a transformative account of a familiar yet mystical subject." —Laurence Bergreen, author o

In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensifi

This work examines the intersection of science and politics in the work of Francois Arago and Jean-Baptiste Biot, the principle architects of the optical revolu