prize8-4, Exercise 3: "The Stevensons built the lighthouses of the world"

Model answer (check the details), using the six questions:

1. Who says it? Popular writers, tourist guides and the family's admirers; the Board's own histories celebrate the achievement.
2. What exactly is claimed? That the Stevenson family built the world's lighthouses. "The world" is the weak point.
3. What would count as evidence? Lists of towers built by the family, lists of lighthouses elsewhere with their engineers, and records of their advice abroad.
4. Compared with what? Other national engineering traditions: Trinity House and its engineers in England, the French Lighthouse Commission, American lighthouse builders, and Richard Henry Brunton in Japan (Chapter 7).
5. Which period? About 1790 to the 1900s.
6. What would change my mind? A list showing that most major lights were built by others.

Verdict: the Stevensons built a large number of the Scottish lights, advised abroad and influenced standards, but they did not build the lighthouses of the world. France led the development of the lens (Chapter 5), and many other countries had their own engineers. A careful sentence: "The Stevenson family built most of Scotland's lighthouses over a century and influenced lighthouse engineering internationally."

Care: check the family's list of works in a scholarly biography or the Board's own history.