THE LIGHT OF COMING DAYS.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 154, 1 December 1874, Page 3

THE LIGHT OF COMING DAYS.

[From the Scientific American.'] The light of other days—practical, not poetical—was the tallow dip. and further back a bunch of moss in a dish of grease. The advance from the primitive illuminator to the gas jet covers a most important stage in the progress of domestic economy. To make the illuminating material distribute itself was a capital stroke of policy. By most people it is regarded as the final stroke in the conflict with the shades of night. But it falls very far short of it. Before we can truly say that our streets and houses are lighted scientifically, another and more important advance must be made. We must get rid of the offensive and poisonous products, the heat and flickering, the sharp contrasts of light and shade, the needless expense and frequent fires, and the thousand other disadvantages attending the distribution and local combustion of our illuminating material, by distributing instead pure light. The problem is simple and easily solved. What in our rooms is a clean, white light, like diffused daylight. The popular mistake lies in supposing that the light must necessarily be generated where it is used. The remoteness of our natural illuminators ought to teach us the absurdity of such a position. Every tyro in optics knows that light is the most tractable of material effects. It is obedient to the last degree. You can send it where you wiii, to any distance, through the crookedest channels, through the darkest passages, and it will emerge undimmed, ready to be absorbed or dispersed as the operator may wish. It is well known, also, that there are many ways of producing a brilliant light much more easily and economically than by carbon combustion in small and scattered flames. Yet, curiously, this familiar knowledge does not appear to have ever been put to practical us ll in producing a simple, wholesome, agreeable, scientific illumination for public and private buildings. To our children, the oldfashioned candle-snuffers are unknown, or known only as relics of an antiquated system of domestic economy. It is possible that, to their children, gas-pipes may be equally obsolete as articles of household use—light tubes furnished with reflectors and terminal radiators taking their place. The working of the predicted system can be sketched in a few words. Given, say, a large hotel to be furnished with artificial light. Instead of having a network of gas pipes leading to the different rooms and to different burners in each room, according to the present method, the light for the entire building would be generated in one place, say in the main ventilating shaft for the utilising of the surplus heat. The distribution of the light would be effected by means of reflectors, each throwing into its appropriate tube a bundle of rays (made parallel by a lens) sufficiently intense to flood the room to which they were directed with a pure white radiance, which could be turned on or off, or graduated by simply pressing a knob or turning a key. In size the light tubes need be no greater than ordinary gas-pipes. Indeed they might be much smaller, since all the light required for the largest room might be transmitted to the reflector as an extremciy slender beam. The terminal lenses would close the tube againsb smoke aud dust, which would dim the reflectors at the angles; and by keeping the enclosed air pure and dry, the absorption of light would be inappre ciable. The advantagesgof this mode of illumination are many and obvious. There would be no poisoning of the atmosphere by local combustion; no scattered flames to occasion fire; no circulation of combustible material to encourage fire, should it happen to break out; children aud careless servants would have nothing to handle that could possibly do lamage; there would be no misplaced heat; no smoke or odour to sicken or annoy; no cross lights or flickerings to hurt the eyes. Besides, the lighting of a house would help to purify its atmosphere instead of

vitiating it as now, if the source of light were placed, as we have suggested, in the ventilating shaft ; and very likely the economy of the light would be such that meuns for the instantaneous illumination of the entire house could be maintained at all hours of the night without costing more than our present imperfect and partial lighting does. For churches, theatres, and other places of public resort, this method of lighting is specially available and inviting. The source of light might be in an absolutely fireproof vault or chamber, or in a separate building, so that the danger of accidental fires, w'th their attendant evils, would be reduced to (■he minimum. Similar advantages would attend its application to shipping. Fnrmines --especially coa'> mints—it is unapproachable for simplicity and safety. Smoky torches and treacherous " snfety lamps" might ho entirely abolisheil, and the deepest pits flooded with white light, without flume or the shadow of a risk of explosion.