The earliest lighthouses were controlled fires on hilltops which signaled a warning to ships as they approached land. Eventually mirrors were used to amplify the light from burning lamps, allowing the signal to reach navigators further out to sea. Though a marked improvement, these were still no match for a dark and stormy night at sea. Then in the 1820s, a French physicist named Augustin Fresnel invented a new kind of lens with a ring of crystalline prisms in the shape of a dome capable of refracting light. Fresnel installed his creation in the Phare de Cordouan, a towering lighthouse. . .
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