Marking the entrance to the Baltimore channel at the mouth of the Magothy River is a lighthouse, a normal-looking two-story affair on a caisson foundation. There is not much remarkable about it, nor was there when it was built in 1908, when the light was powered by 55-gallon drums of fuel. But for a two-year span the light was powered by a battery powered not by fuel but by an atomic reactor.

On this day, the Baltimore Light lighthouse became the first — and only — lighthouse in history to be powered by nuclear energy. The battery was supposed to last five years, but lasted only two, and replaced with a conventional electric generator. It is powered today by solar energy.

Installing atomic generators may seem far-fetched, but it is by far not the craziest idea to have come out for the use of nuclear energy. An oversupply of nuclear weapons particularly led Congress to develop “project plowshare” for civilian uses of atomic explosions. Among the most colorful ideas was to build the Panama Canal by means of atomic excavation (abandoned), to drill for gas (carried out successfully, though the gas had detectable amounts of radioactivity), and human spaceflight, which presumably is still in the planning stages.