Plate prism glass is now manufactured with its outer or street surface ground and polished like plate glass, with its prisms accurate and smooth. In dimensions which may reach fifty-four by sixty inches it affords surfaces easily kept clean, and transmitting much more light than glass held in frames of small divisions.
Whence the gain in thus exchanging plane glass for glass rough, ribbed, or prismatic? Rays streaming through an ordinary window strike nearby surfaces of wall, ceiling, and floor; from these they are reflected in large measure and return through the glass to outer space. Rough, ribbed, or prismatic glass throws the rays much further into the room, hence they strike so much larger an area of wall, ceiling, and floor that in being reflected again and again the light is well diffused, and but little is sent forth again into outside space. The form of the glass gives the entering light its most useful direction, so that the new panes serve better than the old. This effect is most striking when prisms are carefully adapted to a particular case in both their angles and their placing. In traversing glass, light is absorbed and wasted, so that the shorter its path the better. In the compound lens devised in 1822 for lighthouses by Augustin Jean Fresnel, light is as effectively bent by the part of the glass shown in dark lines as if the whole lens were employed.
Luxfer prism.
Fresnel lens.
This brings us to means for the best use of artificial light. Within the past thirty years the standard of illumination, thanks to electricity, has steadily risen. More important than ever, therefore, is it that light should be employed pleasantly and effectively. This in the main is a question of placing the sources of light judiciously, and of so reflecting and refracting their rays that they will be of agreeable quality, and arrive where they are wanted with the least possible loss. Reflectors rightly shaped and kept clean economize much light. For lack of them in streets and squares we may sometimes observe half the rays from a lamp taking their way to the sky where they do no good. In shop windows ribbed reflectors throw full illumination on the wares displayed, while the sources of light are out of view. The same method is employed in art galleries and in museums. A parabolic reflector sends forth as parallel rays the powerful beam of a lighthouse, a locomotive, or a searchlight. An incandescent lamp of ingenious design is silvered on its upper half so that none of its light is wasted. Because the arc lamp is the cheapest of all illuminants it is adopted for out-of-door lighting where its unpleasant glare is tempered by distance. In factory lighting its brightness is excessive and harmful unless moderated. A capital plan is to employ an ordinary continuous current and place the positive carbon, with its brilliant centre, below the negative carbon; beneath these two carbons a good reflector throws the rays to the ceiling, whence they descend with agreeable diffusion and much less loss than when globes of ground glass surround the arc. A common white ceiling when quite flat is an excellent reflector; indeed, a sheet of white blotting paper returns light nearly as well as a polished mirror, and for many purposes it serves better; the mirror sends back its beam in a sharply defined area which may be dazzling, the paper scatters light with thorough and agreeable effect.
Lamp and reflector a unit.
