Our lens was manufactured in Paris, France in 1894.

Each of them were unique because each of them had to have a certain signal to the ships and had, needs for how far out they projected their light.

And Fresnel, in Paris, in Paris in the earlier century had developed this glass.

So Paris was the only place that made these glass lenses because they had refined the art of making glass and creating these prisms that would take the light from a gas burner and project it forward onto a point.

In fact.

When the lens was created, they would have tuned it like a piano to make sure that that light reach and focused as far out in the distance as it could.

So that the ships could find their way to shore.

This lens came to America in 1894 and got put up in the tower in 1895.

I believe it represents the first bivalve lens in the United States.

So they had been used in, Europe for about a half a century.

But in 1893 they were introduced at this infamous 1893 World's Fair.

And so there is a bivalve lens on display in that fair.

But that lens didn't actually get operational until 1897, when it was, put in one of the new Jersey towers.

And so our lands in 1894, lit up in 1895, was probably the first operational bivalve lens in the United States.

When you look at the lens, you'll see some interesting things about it.

For example, some of the glass has been ground off, likely because they had to replace the lamp and the lamp didn't quite fit the new lens.

And we look at it today and we think, how horrible, because they destroyed this incredible artifact.

But at that time it really was a light bulb, right?

It was mechanical.

It was a tool.

And as beautiful as it is, the most important thing was that it operated so much so that the U.S. Coast Guard kept two lighthouse keepers here for all of that time to ensure that those wicks were trimmed every night.

That the Mercury was in place, that the light was focused and working and operational.

In the early 2000s, a group of older volunteers in the community found out that the U.S. Coast Guard was about to decommission and deconstruct the tower.

And so they gathered quickly together and went and plead with the county and then the city commission to accept the donation of the tower to those entities and managed to pull that off.

And so all of a sudden, they had a nonprofit.

They had they had started and they were to manage in partnership with the city, the lighthouse.

And it was basically a rusty old tower and a strip of land.

And so it needed some work.

So the first thing they did was set about finding funds to restore the tower.

And so there was a restoration done about 20 years ago.

One of the things that we identified, this group that saved the tower had a historian, and his name was John Canetta.

And, he had done all the research about the tower and where it came from.

And one day he came in and announced, I found the lens, and that's where he had identified that it was in New Orleans.

We actually sent them a Christmas card every year just to say hi.

And then about every 3 or 4 years, we would ask if we could get our lens back to return to the tower.

And they gave some excuses about, oh you need security.

You can't just load this up in your pickup truck and drive it over to Carrabelle.

You have to have a professional transport.

So we would deal with that.

We would put a little CD together and save some money and go back five years later and say, okay, well, we have money for transportation and a CD here.

You know, we're ready for our lens.

As a result of us getting prepared for the lens and them protecting it for all those years, which is very important as well.

We were able to get the lens delivered back to us, and so sort of gave us a chance to consider really how we were going to display it.

And because it was open and you could see the lens, the lamp, the burner inside, and because it was ideal in size, we decided that it might be worthwhile to, automated, animate it.

So it now spins and is lit with a lens, a light.

It's really like experiencing being a lighthouse keeper when you're in the room and you see the light moving around.

And even though you can climb the tower today and we have a replica of this lens up in the lens room, you're not with a lens.

You're on the observation deck below it.

So this is really a unique opportunity to sort of experience the light as it moves around the room.