Fountain Information

Old fountains

Old fountains, they never did much?

Fountains are marvellous with colour changing lights isn't technology wonderful?

Well if you thought that's is true you would be wrong.

Way back in 1909 a gentleman by the name of F.W. Darlington "opened" a fountain in Denver that had mutiple jets with colour changing lights remotely controlled. So how did he do it?

Its true you could not get water proof lights back then, infact electric lights were not common at all but he had a very simple but clever way of lighting a fountain using arc lights (as used in search lights)

He had a pump chamber built in a lake (yes, the lake was drained) the roof of the pump chamber had what we would now call skylights built in, but these skylights were glass domes on round towers, protruding above the finished water level

  A) Glass dome

B) Nozzle configuration

C) water level

D) "Pillar" for dome

E) Arc light

F) Underwater pump chamber

Above is a simplified drawing of how the fountains were lit

The jets were switched remotely by using compressed air operated valves with  some one sitting on shore operating levers to change the valve sequences. It could be argued that this was the first musical fountain.

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