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Hartland lighthouse on Tuesday night sent its warning beam out over the sea as it has done for many years, but for the first time it was operated by mains electricity.

1959 Hartland lighthouse electricity

Engineers worked against the clock to complete the conversion on time, after having been held up by the non-arrival of equipment. 

It was not just a question of connecting the cable, for the light, the most brilliant in this channel – the two three-thousand-watt lamps in use provide one and a quarter million candlepower – operates on 80 volts. This has meant that the current has had to stepped down from the normal 240 volts.
Principal keeper, Mr E G Barnes, and his two assistants are happy about the changeover, but their wives and children who live on the station are absolutely delighted. For them it means the luxury of electric irons, vacuum cleaners, possibly electric cookers – they now use solid fuel stoves winter and summer – and best of all in so isolated a community, perhaps television. Mr Barnes told the Gazette that they will have to buy their own sets. There was, he believed, an organisation that provided them, but only for lighthouses out at sea.
The full Gazette article is dated 2 January 1959.

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