WWII MANCE MILITARY HELIOGRAPH 5INCH MK 5

Sir Henry Christopher Mance (1840-1926), of British Army Signal Corps, developed the first apparatus while stationed at Karachi, Bombay.
Used for signalling by reflecting the suns ray's, a second mirror is supplied for when the sun is behind the sender. This model has not changed since before the Boer War. The whole unit can be packed into the leather case with the legs strapped to the side. A Heliograph (from the Greek Helios meaning "sun"), is a wireless solar telegraph that signals using Morse code flashes of sunlight reflected by a mirror.
The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The Heliograph was a simple but highly effective instrument for instantaneous optical communication over 50 km or more in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Its major uses were military, survey and forest protection work. Heliograph's were standard issue in the British and Australian armies until the 1960s, and were used by the Pakistani army as late as 1975.

This item can be demonstrated.

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• On one occasion [during our training as infantry signallers in early 1940] we used heliograph during a night exercise and with the light of a bright moon were able to transmit and receive signals, being told that during the years between the Wars the heliograph was used by the British Army to transmit football results throughout their Far East stations! [Excerpt Second World Memoirs of Joe Brown of Peebles www.lawlerbrown.com ]
  .......... Major Joe Brown, Redditch, Worc, UK, 10th of October 2011
  
  

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