SEARCHLIGHT MADE BY HAND
The powerful beams of light that now search the night skies in England and elsewhere may recall to Boer War veterans how a primitive form of searchlight played itsvpart in the defence of Mafeking, just 40 years ago. Baden Powell, anxious to discourage night attacks by . the Boers, was helped by a commercial traveller who had Avith him some samples of lamps and a small supply of carbide. They fitted a lamp with an acetylene burner into a reflector made from biscuit tin,s and fixed, it to the top of a pole, which was turned slowly round to sweep the ground in front of the forts. During the night the outfit was moved from one fort to another and the beam shone out from each in turn, so that the Boers were given the idea that o battery of searchlights could illuminate the whole of the ground over which they would have to advance should they make a night attack. They were not to know that the defenders had only sufficient carbide to keep one light going for a few nights.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19400805.2.43
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 195, 5 August 1940, Page 7
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185SEARCHLIGHT MADE BY HAND Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 195, 5 August 1940, Page 7
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