ML-300
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| Private | |
| Founded | 1954 |
| Headquarters | Houston, Texas, United States |
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Key people
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Matt Scheuing (CEO) |
| Products | Navigational aids |
| Owner | Xylem, Inc |
| Website | www |
Tideland Signal, sometimes referred to as Tidelands, is a privately held, Houston, Texas based manufacturer of marine navigational aids, with main offices in Lafayette, Louisiana, Vancouver, Canada, Burgess Hill, UK, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. It is the manufacturer of the ML-300 lantern, widely used in lighthouses around the world for more than 50 years. In 2016, Tideland was acquired by Xylem, Inc.
Tideland Signal was founded by several salesman of Automatic Power, a battery manufacturer which was then a primary player in the buoy market. The company originally sold directly to Automatic's market, but with limited success.
During the 1960s, solar cells had started to become practical systems for recharging batteries in remote locations. Hoffman Electronics, a pioneer in solar power, had approached Automatic with the idea of placing panels on their buoys to reduce the number of battery replacements needed to keep a site operations. Automatic instead saw this as a serious threat to their business, so they purchased the Hoffman concept and buried it.
Shortly thereafter, a research division of Exxon was in the process of introducing their own solar panels. Examining the market, they saw that Tideland was struggling with 30% market share, and approached them. Tideland took up development, introducing a buoy with rechargeable batteries and a solar panel. It was an immediate success, and the company soon eclipsed Automatic. By the late 1970s the solar-powered buoy was widely used.
In 1965 Tideland introduced the world first transistorized automatic lamp changer. In 1967 Tideland introduced a 300 millimetres (12 in) acrylic Fresnel lens lantern, the ML-300, which is still widely used.
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Wikipedia