Science: Troglodyte Light

An incident of the Manhattan meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers last week (see below) was Dr. Matthew Luckiesh’s presentation of his new General Electric sunlight lamp. The bulb is 6¼ in. long. It contains two separated tungsten electrodes, a little pool of mercury, a tungsten filament. When the electric switch is turned, current heats the filament to incandescence. The heat vaporizes the mercury. The mercury vapor diffuses between the electrodes and permits the current to jump across as a brilliant mercury arc. The combined light of arc, electrodes and filament appears much whiter than Mazda “daylight” bulbs. It produces 40 times as much humanly beneficial ultraviolet radiation as does the midday midsummer sun of equal intensity.

Dr. Luckiesh, director of General Electrics lighting research laboratory at Cleveland, foresees this new lamp the agent of a revolution in social customs, habits of work and play: “In many places—nurseries, schools and gymnasiums —abbreviated dress may be utilized. In order that the health-giving rays of the lamp may energize workers, is it unreasonable to assume that, in our centres of in-dustry, men and women will wear fewer clothes, will expose more of their bodies to the stimulating effect of the ultraviolet radiation?”