His family lived on a neighboring island and could see the flash of the lighthouse at night. In 1915, a new assistant lighthouse keeper, Winfield Scott Thompson, came to the Minot’s Ledge lighthouse. The order, one quick flash, four flashes, then three flashes, was apparently chosen at random.
The story begins in 1895, when the lighthouse changed its flash pattern after a recommendation that all lighthouses have numerical flash sequences.
The shorthand, as the story goes, dates back to the early 1900s from Minot’s Ledge lighthouse off the coast of Cohasset, Massachusetts. 143 is based on the number of letters in each word of the phrase: I (1), love (4), you (3).
