The History of Creation of Cartable Lighting Tower
Who invented the 1st conveyable lighting tower?
This depends mostly on your definition of a lighting tower. A broad 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 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 first machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a Portable floodlighting unit for airports.
The patent describes a frame with 4 wheels at every corner ( allowing the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one giant electrical lamp at each end of the auto. The machine is meant to be used to provide on-demand lighting of alternative landing sites at airfields 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 closer similarity to present day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a cartable lighting tower consisting of a base frame ( which contains an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with two 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 guarantee stability in gusty winds.
This is kind of a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent principally forms the root of most current day lighting towers which contain similar elements like a base that stores the engine and generator together with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The following patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for a solution to provide more intensive 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 framework that each hold a cluster of electric lamps. The design also permits for the masts to be rotated enabling finer control over the area of illumination. By offering two masts the light tower also allows for illumination over just about every side of the machine. This is unlike previous light towers which generally offer illumination on just one side of the machine.
Since 1980 considerable progress has been manufactured by lighting tower makers. Though the overall design has sundry small from those seen in the 1980s many improvements have been made to make lighting towers easier to use and more ecologically 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 almost any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower in addition has broken new ground by exploiting extremely economical lamps to reduce fuel consumption dramatically, which is especially timely seeing as global warming is becoming a more and more prevalent concern.
There’s a lot of information on this topic online, so you can get more of it if you want, and you can watch modern family season 1 episode 16 or archer season 1 episode 8 meantime.