A FRESNEL LENS sits in the gallery at the Maine Maritime Museum while an introduction to a time-lapse video plays in the background. The lens is a centerpiece to the museum’s newest, permanent display, “Into the Lantern: A Lighthouse Exhibit.”
The Maine Maritime Museum’s newest attraction isn’t a historical schooner, a ship model or an exhibit on the early explorers — it’s a 1,800-pound glass lens from the historic lantern of the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse.
MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM Curator of Exhibits Christopher Hall, seen in this June photo, has worked with his team over the past several months to recreate the east tower of Two Lights inside the Bath facility to house that lighthouse’s original second order Fresnel lens.
“INTO THE LANTERN: A LIGHTHOUSE EXHIBIT” features a full-sized recreation of a lighthouse keeper’s quarters.
To do so, viewing the lens becomes an immersive experience as guests are asked to walk around the circumference of the enclosed, recreated lantern that projects light from the lens onto the backdrop of a projected time-lapse video of the cape’s rocky shoreline. The video was shot over the course of several months from the same elevation and lookout point of the lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth.
“You can see it the way it’s meant to be seen, even if it’s not in the original place,” Timm said.
The Fresnel lens, originally installed at Cape Elizabeth in 1924, was cutting-edge in its time for its approach to focusing light by using multiple small prisms to deflect diverging light rays into concentrated parallel beams that fade less over long distances. It was also one of the first in the United States to use an electric incandescent light source.
Though lighthouses are now largely automated and current GPS technology soars past that of the Fresnel lens, Timm maintains that the scientific basis of the Fresnel still finds resonances today.
“When lighthouses were made with these lenses, it was the top technology of its day,” he said. “Lighthouse lens technology was featured in all the world’s fairs. And a lot of the technologies we have today, whether LCD panels or lasers, are based on these fundamental principles of prisms and reflecting or refracting lights.”
The museum acquired the Fresnel lens from the U.S. Coast Guard after it was kept in the Cape Elizabeth Town Hall from 1995 to 2013. Due to the expensive cost of upkeep, the lens was expected to go to a U.S. Coast Guard archive, where it would be protected but not in view. According to Timm, the Maine Maritime Museum felt strongly that they could provide a safe, secure space to both protect it and provide a means for interpretation.
Timm, who worked under the direction of Curator of Exhibits Christopher Hall, said that the museum worked hard to showcase the lifestyle of the lighthouse keepers as well. In doing so, the exhibit also features recreations of a lighthouse keeper’s living quarters and the name board of the Oakey Alexander, a coal ship that wrecked near Cape Elizabeth, as a reminder of the importance of lighthouses.
“It was two years in the making,” Marketing and Communications Manager Katie Spiridakis told The Times Record in June. “So basically we built an addition onto the museum to house a brand-new gallery space and what we’ve done is replicated the top of the east tower at Two Lights, so it’s an exact replica of the lantern room.”
“What’s great about this exhibit is that it provides accessibility that may not be available to people with mobility issues,” said Spiridakis. “Plus, it’s just difficult to get up in these lighthouses — not all of them are open to the public.”
“People like to get away from reading stuff on a wall and actually be in those spaces,” said museum curator Chris Hall earlier in the year. “After being up in Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse three years ago I realized that this is a pretty amazing place that people don’t get to experience, and I was hoping we could recreate that as much as possible. The different pieces sort of came together, especially once we had the lens.”
The unique exhibit also has another feature: it’s now included in the United States Lighthouse Society’s Passport program, and the Into the Lantern exhibit will have its own unique stamp for passport carriers.
“Basically, every lighthouse in the country has its own stamp and when you visit and you have your passport, you get stamped,” said Spiridakis. “When you think about it, it’s not like they’re putting up new lighthouses every day, so they haven’t added a new stamp in forever, as far as I know.”
Though lighthouses are more and more often accompanied by computerized technology, such as GPS and radar technologies, Timm said it’s important not to relegate lighthouses to simply historic or scenic structures, a reminder of the past and the quaintness of Maine.
“Their role and how they function is always changing,” said Timm. “There’s been a big movement as other navigations systems come on to view them more as scenic objects. You always imagine a postcard view with a lighthouse — it’s associated with tourism. We’re interested in all the functions the lighthouse has.”
“They’re still an important aid to navigation,” he added. “If your GPS if out and you’re out at night … it’s very practical directly to navigate. I don’t want to discount it, but we have many ways to complement it now.”
Alongside the new permanent exhibit is “See the Light: the Preservation of Midcoast Maine Lighthouses,” an exhibit aimed at illuminating the challenges and victories of preserving the historic lighthouses in Midcoast Maine. “See the Light” will be on view through Oct. 22.
With previous reporting from Times Record reporter Nathan Strout and former staff writer Ben Goodridge.
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