Turnabout
n a sultry day in September, 1832, thirty-three-year-old Felix Dominy was perched high above the rocks of Montauk Point, at the far eastern tip of Long Island, removing the copper dome of the Montauk Lighthouse. The son and grandson of highly skilled cabinetmakers and clock makers who ran a small shop in the nearby village of East Hampton, Felix had never done this kind of work before. He was a woodworker—not a coppersmith. Why was
