chamber) was made by Sautter, Marlé & Co. It used a kerosene lamp with an incandescent mantle. A heavy cast iron system floated and rotated in a bath of mercury, which acted as a bearing. The bath contained roughly of mercury. The poisonous mercury from the lighthouse was used for decades by children in the surrounding villages for playing. The light system was set in rotation by a suspended load; it needed to be rewound every two hours. It was installed during repairs of 1901. German bombers targeted the lighthouse in August 1941, though only the lantern structure and optical system were destroyed. After World War II, various optical systems were tested. Kohler generators were installed in 1949 along with the stationary electric light system. A new rotating light system (EMV-3) was installed in 1963, making the lighthouse fully automated. It was in use until 1982, when an experimental EMV-930M system (made in Ukraine) was installed. The rotation mechanism of the optical system was a novel solution – there are no electric motors; it uses a revolving magnetic field instead. The optics brought a six to eight hundredfold increase to the efficiency of the light radiated by a 1 kW quartz lamp. Due to deterioration, the lighthouse underwent frequent repairs; major repairs were in completed in 1957 and 1970. During the repairs in years 1978–81 on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the lighthouse, it was covered with a reinforced concrete shell and perchlorovinyl paint. As there was no white colour available, yellow was used. The paint blocked the way for humidity to escape from the body of the tower and water collecting in the inner surface of the cement mortar, freezing and melting, started to damage the already old and degraded lime mortar. By the mid-80s cracks appeared in the surface of the lighthouse and pieces of the cement mortar and smaller stones started falling off. During 1987 and 1988 two corners of the tower collapsed and emergency restoration was started. During the years 1989–90, to prevent collapsing of the lighthouse, a thick reinforced concrete shell was built to support the foundation and walls up to the top of the buttresses. The tower was painted with whitewash. Air channels were left in the concrete for ventilating the structure. The lantern room of the lighthouse was renovated in 2001 and the tower was last repainted, with whitewash, in 2012.