How Do You Move a Fresnel Lens? Very Carefully

Of all the exhibits the Martha's Vineyard Museum has to move to its Vineyard Haven location, the Fresnel lens is the biggest project. Specialist Jim Woodward is taking apart hundreds of glass prisms.

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Aquinnah Condo Owners File Suit Against Town

A lawsuit pits the town of Aquinnah’s efforts to improve the Gay Head Lighthouse against the rights of nearby condominium residents to enjoy their homes in peace and privacy.

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Society Wages Campaign for Lighthouses
Ethan Kelley
Lighthouses define the character of Martha’s Vineyard. They guide people from land and sea to the same shorelines, sheltering them under beacons of home.
 
Today, the Island’s lighthouses are deteriorating. Bricks are crumbling in the breeze, and iron is flaking away in the salt air. Before long, these landmarks could be reduced to brittle, rotting shells.
 
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Half the Job is Done; the Gay Head Lens Is Brought to New Home at the Historical Society
Vineyard Gazette
When the good ship Uncle Toby brought the new Fresnel lens to New York and the lens was subsequently deposited at the Edgartown wharf, almost a hundred years ago, little did the drivers, or anyone else for that matter, dream that the forty yoke oxen employed to transport the lens across the Island to Gay Head would not be the last agents to ever move the sixty frames of glass prisms and the multitudinous collection of machinery necessary to operate the light. This week all of these things were back in Edgartown.
 
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Women Run Away With Top Spots in Gay Head 10K
Louisa Hufstader

The top three finishers in Sunday’s Gay Head 10K road race were all women. Molly Seidel of Watertown was the winner.

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Museum Stays the Course With Fresnel Lens
Alex Elvin

The historic Fresnel lens that once sat atop the Gay Head Light will not be moved to Aquinnah.

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Selectmen Agree to Put Fresnel Lens Question Before Voters
Alex Elvin

A group of Aquinnah residents who want to bring the original lens from the Gay Head Light home to Aquinnah brought their case before the town selectmen this week.

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Aquinnah Wants Gay Head Light Lens to Come Home
Alex Elvin

A plan by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum to relocate from Edgartown to Vineyard Haven has caused rumblings on the other side of the Island, where a number of people are now calling for the original 19th-century lens that sat atop the Gay Head Light in Aquinnah to return home.

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A Trip To Gay Head: The Light
Vineyard Gazette
The tower on which the light stands, which seemed at a distance to be white, is in reality red, being made of pressed brick, and capped with freestone; it is forty feet high, and surmounted by an iron frame in which is set the glass of the outer lantern; through the centre passes a large circular iron shaft, on the top of which stands the cylinder containing the oil, and around which revolves the lantern itself.
 
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Museum Receives Grant for Fresnel Lens Relocation

The Martha’s Vineyard Museum has received a $109,040 grant to move the historic 1854 Gay Head Lighthouse Fresnel lens from Edgartown to Vineyard Haven.

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