The History of Invention of Portable Lighting Tower
Who invented the 1st conveyable lighting tower?
This depends principally 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 an enormous area, such a device has likely 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 indicates that machines not dissimilar to today’s lighting towers were being designed in the 1930s.
A patent from 1932 shows what could be the first machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a transportable floodlighting unit for airfields.
The patent describes a chassis with four wheels at every corner ( allowing the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one giant electrical lamp at every end of the car. The machine is designed 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 because of adverse weather conditions.
More lately in 1980 a US patent 4181929 was filed for a Portable illuminating tower that illustrates a much more close resemblance to present day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a portable lighting tower consisting of a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with 2 electric lamps at the higher 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 strong winds.
This is kind of a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent largely forms the foundation of most modern day lighting towers which contain similar elements like a base that stores the engine and generator along with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The subsequent patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for a solution to provide more extensive illumination. The US patent 4220981 describes a chassis with four wheels to hold the generator and engine and two folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the framework that each hold a cluster of electrical lamps. The design also allows for the masts to be revolved enabling finer control of the area of illumination. By offering 2 masts the light tower also allows for illumination over nearly all sides of the machine. This isn’t like previous light towers which sometimes offer illumination on only 1 side of the machine.
Since 1980 substantial progress has been manufactured by lighting tower makers. Though the final design has sundry little from those seen in the 1980s many improvements have been made to make lighting towers better 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 allows virtually any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower has also broken new ground by exploiting highly cheap lamps to reduce fuel consumption dramatically, which is particularly timely seeing as global warming is starting to become a more and more plentiful concern.
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