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Shown here on the left page is the first order lens from Virginia’s Hog Island Lighthouse as it appeared on display at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia on November 17, 1952.
The gigantic 2,500 pound lens produced by the Henry-LaPaute Company in France is about ten feet tall and has 368 prisms. Before the Hog Island Lighthouse was blown up in 1948 using 350 pounds of TNT, the lens was removed from the lighthouse and given to the Mariners Museum where it remained on display for 24 years.
When the Mariners Museum relinquished control of the lens, it was loaned to the City of Portsmouth, Virginia for display. However, the lens then remained crated up for the next 30 years until arrangements were finally made to put it on display in an outdoor pavilion setting on the Portsmouth waterfront, which was accomplished in 2004.
The Mariner’s Museum now has a different 1st order lens on display; one that was removed in 1963 from the Cape Charles Lighthouse on Smith Island, Virginia. (Lighthouse Digest archives photo.)
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