The History of Invention of Portable Lighting Tower
Who invented the first cartable lighting tower?
This depends principally on your definition of a lighting tower. A detailed definition could include something as simple as a candle or primitive torch placed on a tall mast to cast light over a big area, such a device has doubtless been used 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 might be the 1st machine of its kind filed in US patent 1934576 and is named as a movable floodlighting unit for airports.
The patent describes a chassis with four wheels at each corner ( allowing the machine to be towed ), a generator powered by an engine and one large electrical lamp at every end of the vehicle. The machine is intended 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 nearer similarity to current day lighting towers.
The US patent 4181929 describes a conveyable lighting tower composed of a base frame ( which has an engine and generator ) and a vertical, extending, hydraulic mast with 2 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 ensure stability in high winds.
This is kind of a serious development in the history of the lighting tower as this patent mostly forms the foundation of most modern day lighting towers which contain similar elements such as a base that stores the engine and generator along with an extending hydraulic mast that supports the luminaries.
The next patent was filed later on in the same year of 1980 but was for an answer to provide more in depth illumination. The US patent 4220981 describes a framework with 4 wheels to hold the generator and engine and 2 folding telescopic masts at opposite corners of the frame 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 every side of the machine. This isn’t like previous light towers which generally offer illumination on only 1 side of the machine.
Since 1980 substantial progress has been made by lighting tower manufacturers. Though the overall design has varied small from those seen in the 1980s many improvements have been made to make lighting towers better to use and more ecologically friendly.
The Hylite lighting tower from Taylor Construction Plant includes Adjustabeam technology which allows the user to adjust the direction of each lamp from the ground. The TCP Hylite also has a flexible chassis design which allows almost any generator to be used to power the light heads.
The TCP Ecolite lighting tower has also damaged new ground by exploiting extremely cost-effective lamps to reduce fuel consumption dramatically, which is very timely seeing as global warming is starting to become a more and more plentiful 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 csi: miami season 8 episode 16 or community season 1 episode 17 meantime.