It was made from 1.25 million bricks and was the highest brick lighthouse tower in the world at the time. Even now, it is the highest structure of its kind in the country. To get to the light, you must ascend 268 stairs. The lantern room is about where floor 3 of the staircase lands you. The keeper's house is where he lived with his family. It contains two rooms and a kitchen. There is no bathroom or toilet inside the house. Outside, there is a small shed for tools and storage. This is all that remains of one of America's first lighthouses. The light itself is located in a glass-walled keepers' apartment which is reached by an internal stairway. The light emits four flashes every 20 seconds, visible for 19 miles. The original lamp was a simple kerosene lamp with a brass reflector. In 1857, the U.S. Lighthouse Service built a more advanced lamp called the "Cape Hatteras" lamp. It used oil vapor instead of smoke for illumination and had a metal mirror attached to a spinning shaft inside the lamp for spreading the light. This lamp is still in use today at several locations along North Carolina's coast. In 1870, the United States Congress passed legislation authorizing the construction of a new set of lights on Cape Hatteras.