Latest / Spotlight English: Advanced / Living in a Lighthouse (Advanced Program)

Transcript

Living in a Lighthouse (Advanced Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

• 0:04
  Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Colin Lowther and I'm Liars Wade. Spotlight uses
• 0:11
  a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
• 0:18
  matter where in the world they live. One hundred years ago, the night
• 0:29
  was dark, the sea was rough, the waves were high, and the
• 0:35
  wind was strong. The sailor was worried. He had sailed a long way,
• 0:41
  and he knew that he was close to land and dangerous rocks. If
• 0:47
  he sailed too close to the rocks, they would wreck his boat. He
• 0:52
  could drown. But then he saw it. He saw something that would keep
• 0:58
  him and his boat. He saw a bright light in the distance. The
• 1:03
  light was shining on and then off. He stopped worrying. It was a
• 1:11
  lighthouse. This tall building, a tower with a bright light at its top,
• 1:17
  would guide him. It warned those at sea to keep away from the
• 1:22
  rocks around it. With its light, the sailor knew where to sail to
• 1:26
  keep safe. Lighthouses like this have been a guide for sailors for hundreds of
• 1:33
  years, But what is their future? Today's spotlight is on lighthouses. Imagine
• 1:44
  a world without GPS or computers. How would you know where you are in
• 1:49
  the dark. Sailors depended on lighthouses for many hundreds of years. They were
• 1:57
  built on the coast, islands, rocks, and even the sea floor.
• 2:04
  Lighthouses guided sailors. The lights showed sailors where to sail and where not to
• 2:10
  sail, but lighthouses also helped sailors to identify where they were. Each lighthouse
• 2:20
  was different, Each had its own colors and marks, and each lighthouse had
• 2:25
  its own system or pattern of light flashes, so sailors knew where they were
• 2:32
  just by looking at the lighthouse, both in the day and at night.
• 2:40
  Before lighthouses existed, fires and taps of hills sometimes guided sailors. Later people
• 2:47
  built towers to make the fires more noticeable. The first known lighthouse was the
• 2:53
  Faros of Alexandria in Egypt. It was built over two thousand years ago.
• 3:00
  For many centuries, this lighthouse was one of the tallest buildings in the world.
• 3:05
  It was about one hundred and six meters tall. That ancient lighthouse no
• 3:10
  longer exists, but some other ancient lighthouses do. The Tower of Hercules in
• 3:17
  northwest Spain is one such lighthouse. It was built by the Romans during the
• 3:24
  first or second century. This lighthouse is the oldest working lighthouse in the world.
• 3:31
  Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Experts say that the age
• 3:40
  of modern lighthouses began in the eighteenth century. In this period, engineers improved
• 3:47
  the way that lighthouses were lit. Some lighthouses used coal fires to create the
• 3:53
  important light, others still used wood fires, and some used oil lights or
• 4:00
  even wax candles. But all these forms of light produced smoke, and the
• 4:05
  smoke made the glass of the lighthouse black and dirty. When the glass was
• 4:11
  dirty, sailors could not see the light. But in seventeen eighty two,
• 4:16
  a Swiss scientist solved the problem. He invented a method of burning oil that
• 4:23
  did not produce smoke. Other engineers produced equipment to increase the intensity or power
• 4:30
  of the light. Over the years, lighthouses used different methods of shining a
• 4:40
  light out into the sea, but in every case someone needed to look after
• 4:46
  the light in the lighthouse. Someone had to light it at night, someone
• 4:50
  had to keep the equipment working, so lighthouse keepers were needed. George Medlicott
• 4:57
  was a lighthousekeeper in the United Kingdom for thirty two years. He told The
• 5:02
  Independent about his memories of living and working in a lighthouse. It was not
• 5:09
  an easy job. Some of the lighthouses did not have running water, working
• 5:14
  toilets or heating. Winters were not great. We stayed in small rooms and
• 5:20
  often spent hours in the dark. Often a lighthouse keeper had to live away
• 5:29
  from his family, but sometimes his family stayed with him. Ebony Gregory had
• 5:35
  an unusual time as a child. Her father was an assistant lighthouse keeper.
• 5:43
  She lived with him on a lonely island off the coast of Australia. She
• 5:48
  told The Guardian about his job and how it affected her. My father helped
• 5:57
  the head lighthouse keeper run and care for the lighthouse and island. They took
• 6:03
  turns to turn the light on every night and off in the morning. They
• 6:10
  cleaned the glass. They made weather reports. Our food arrived by air every
• 6:15
  two weeks, along with any letters. If there was bad weather, the
• 6:20
  food drops would be delayed. I did not have any friends. A picture
• 6:27
  of my second birthday party shows no one my age, just the two families
• 6:32
  on the island. But times have changed for lighthouses. New technology for lighthouses
• 6:42
  and navigation has arrived. Soon there may be no lighthousekeepers living in lighthouses.
• 6:49
  Many countries, including Australia, Finland, Ireland and Japan, no longer employ
• 6:56
  lighthousekeepers. Puntuk Arena is an important lighthouse on the edge of the island of
• 7:03
  Capri in Italy. Lighthousekeepers worked there for over one hundred and fifty one years,
• 7:12
  but now its last lighthousekeeper has left. Carlo Doriano was the last lighthousekeeper
• 7:20
  of punter Carena. He did not want to leave. He felt that it
• 7:27
  was important to have a person in a lighthouse in case anything went wrong with
• 7:31
  the technology. As he prepared to leave his lighthouse home and job, he
• 7:39
  talked with the BBC. He remembered storm waves crashing into his window twenty five
• 7:46
  meters up the lighthouse. He remembered storm winds that made the lighthouse shake.
• 7:57
  At first, I believed these shakes were all earthquakes or shocks, But over
• 8:01
  the years I have learned that the anger of the sea is more beautiful than
• 8:07
  a quiet sea. It makes you remember that nature exists, and that this
• 8:13
  mass of water is open and alive. Only someone who lives alone can understand
• 8:20
  this. My heart is here. When I can no longer keep the light,
• 8:26
  I think part of me will turn off. Two. What do you
• 8:31
  think is lost when lighthousekeepers have to leave? Do you think technology can do
• 8:37
  a better job guiding boats at night? Do we even need lighthouses anymore?
• 8:43
  Tell us what you think. You can leave a comment on our website or
• 8:48
  email us at Radio at Radio English dot net. You can also comment on
• 8:54
  Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Spotlight Radio. The writer of this program was
• 9:07
  Katie Blake. The producer was James Totten. The voices you heard were from
• 9:13
  the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for the program
• 9:20
  and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it
• 9:26
  on the internet at www dot Radio English dot net. This program is called
• 9:35
  Living in a Lighthouse. Visit our website to download our free official app for
• 9:43
  Android and Apple devices. We hope you can join us again for the next
• 9:50
  Spotlight program. Goodbye,