Sun valve and gas flasher (Dalén)
Válvula solar y destellador de gas (Dalén)
- Date
- 1907 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lidingö, Stockholm, Sweden
- Credited to
- Gustaf Dalén (AGA)
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A device that shuts off an acetylene light in daylight, when a blackened rod expands in the Sun's heat, and relights it at dusk. With the flasher and acetylene dissolved in acetone, it made lighthouses and buoys that run for months without an attendant.
What it led to
- automatic lighthouses and beacons with no keepers
- acetylene lit buoys
- Dalén's Nobel Prize in Physics (1912)