The book is written for the layperson, so it includes both history and technology, and it attempts to go fairly light on the tech side, but while still explaining the extraordinary achievements. He had been intended to be an engineer, but he never set aside his literary leanings the way his uncle had been encouraged.

As a lighthouse lover, having visited over 70, I rated it a 5-if you are not a lighthouse lover, perhaps a 4. For everyone who has heard of 'Lighthouse Stevensons' a thousand or more will recognise the name [Robert] Louis Stevenson. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. Reading this book I learned, once again, how incredibly creative and industrious our nineteenth century ancestors were.And even when lighthouses were starting to be built around Britain, there was often the excuse that 'if God had wanted a lighthouse there, he would have put one there'. Here is a family of engineers who spanned four generations and produced a children's story author, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tusitala, the teller of tales.

E., since that disease hadn't been discovered at that time instead he simply had a mysterious case of degenerative paralysis as far as his contemporaries were concerned.

It's mind-blowing that anyone could build on those sites, especially in a era before power tools, as the key building period was the 1790s-1840s.

After being pressured to join the family business, Robert Louis Stevenson pursued a literary career that produced “ Kidnapped”and “ Treasure Island”. David Alan Stevenson (1854-1938) and Charles Alexander Stevenson (1855-1950) designed numerous lighthouses from the late nineteenth century to the late 1930s. Stevenson also developed lighthouse apparatus that was fitted in Irish lighthouses and lighthouses in the colonies, such as rotating oil lamps placed in front of parabolic silver-plated reflectors. The early parts of the book that covered the history of getting lighthouse construction started despite political and cultural resistance was the most interesting. Smith was in fact Stevenson’s stepfather as his own father Alan, had died in 1774, and his mother had remarried to Thomas Smith.I like the way the outposts for the lighthouses are described --- windswept, wave-swept spits of land often 10-15 miles offshore from some desolate area in the north. For convenience and out of an appreciation of the working conditions the stones were cut to size and dressed off site, however the work had to be precise so the finished construction was waterproof and storm resistant. Maybe that's because they were earlier on and so had to come up with creative solutions to problems instead of just building standard lighthouses in later years.

Among other achievements, he was responsible for the design of London Road and Regent Road in Edinburgh, the Hutcheson Bridge in Glasgow and various railway lines. Not only was it built into a sandstone reef, the North Sea created hazardous and very limited working conditions. Thomas Stevenson was both a lighthouse designer and meteorologist who designed over 30 lighthouses over the course of his life.It is a fascinating story, and the reader will get a full appreciation of the technical and logistical difficulties involved, compounded at times by some of the most frightening and powerful weather on the planet. Here is the story of a family who does not seem as if they could exist in our modern world of short attention spans.