It took years of work, gathering pieces salvaged from lighthouses around the world to reconstruct a First Order Fresnel lens at Graves Light.
Similar to the original, with many parts from the same manufacturer, the reconstructed First Order lens took spirited teamwork from a lot of people.
Under federal law, all lens parts from the old U.S. Lighthouse Service and Coast Guard remain federal property, even if they had been discarded. So we scoured the world to find the bronze and glass parts from lighthouses that lit the way for the old French and British empires.
The Boston Globe has the story.
We have to work things out with the Coast Guard and other authorities to make the lens operational, and that will take some time.
