First automated lighthouse

The beginning of the end of an era of human-operated lighthouses commenced in 1894 when the Oxcars Lighthouse in the Firth of Forth estuary, south of Aberdour, Fife, UK, was converted from an oil lamp to an automatic gas light that ran on a clockwork mechanism, thus it no longer required permanently stationed keepers to maintain it.

Arguably Oxcars was only semi-automated as engineers still had to return every two weeks to rewind the clockwork mechanism.

A much less labour-intensive automated lighthouse emerged a few years later in 1912 with the conversion of Blockhussuden Lighthouse in the entrance to Stockholm Harbour to run on acetylene gas, in tandem with a sunlight sensor to detect when it was dark. Both of these were innovations devised by the Swedish inventor and Nobel Laureate Gustaf Dalén, who would go on to found the AGA company, which would make both lighthouses and ovens. AGA lighthouses are said to be able to run for a year without maintenance.