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Information and IdeasEasyChoosing evidence about an object's origin

Information and Ideas practice question

The Carrick Point Lighthouse, first lit in 1872, is being restored by a volunteer team. One point of debate concerns the tower's original lens, a large assembly of glass prisms removed in 1955 and now stored in a local museum. Restoration historian Peter Okonjo claims that this lens was not made by craftspeople in the region, as local tradition holds, but was instead manufactured in France and shipped to the site. Team members have been examining the stored lens and nineteenth-century records from the lighthouse.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Okonjo's claim?

  1. A. The lens frame bears a stamped foundry mark that matches marks on lenses documented in the 1871 shipping records of a Paris workshop.Correct
  2. B. The lighthouse tower was built of granite quarried at a site three miles from Carrick Point.
  3. C. A keeper's logbook from 1880 records that the lens prisms were cleaned every week.
  4. D. Several other lighthouses along the same coast received new lenses at some point during the 1870s.

Answer: A. The lens frame bears a stamped foundry mark that matches marks on lenses documented in the 1871 shipping records of a Paris workshop.

A ties the actual lens to a documented French workshop, which is precisely the origin Okonjo claims. B concerns the stone of the tower, not the lens, and supports local manufacture of a different component. C shows the lens was maintained but says nothing about where it was made. D establishes only that lens installations were common in that decade, which does not identify where the Carrick Point lens came from.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. The lighthouse tower was built of granite quarried at a site three miles from Carrick Point.
The granite is the tower, not the lens, and local stone actually cuts toward the local-origin tradition Okonjo is arguing against.
C. A keeper's logbook from 1880 records that the lens prisms were cleaned every week.
Weekly cleaning shows the lens was maintained but reveals nothing about where it was manufactured, which is the whole point of Okonjo's claim.
D. Several other lighthouses along the same coast received new lenses at some point during the 1870s.
Knowing that lens installations were common along the coast in the 1870s doesn't identify the origin of the Carrick Point lens specifically — you need evidence tying this lens to France.

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