Supplement to The Northern Advocate SUNSHINE LAID ON

Northern Advocate, 31 October 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

Supplement to The Northern Advocate

SUNSHINE LAID ON

“fJTHE trouble is,” says the French

inventor, Jacques Arthuys, “we ■do not get enough sun.” So writes Paul Reilly in the “News Chronicle.” Any other summer but this, that would sound strange. Yet in spite of sunbathing, scanty sun suits, roof gardens, and sun trap window glass, we still don’t get enough sun. Out of the 1500 hours in the year during which the sun shines in England we only benefit from about 150. For the rest of the time we are shut up in our flats, in our offices. • There are \ rooms in office blocks which have never seen the sun, where clerks work beneath eternal electric bulbs. In a New York street of skyscrapers half the inhabitants live in a perpetual twilight.

Harnessed the Sun. , But the genius of - a rolling-stone / Frenchman, it is claimed, will pierce the dark corners of big cities with real sun rays. Neat, moustached, forty-year-old Jacques Arthuys, who in turn .has been aviator, lawyer, politician, is now the inventor who has harnessed the sun. . a.

It is a simple idea. The . same one that we used as boys in the classroom. Then we used little mirrors and reflected the ’ rays on the master’s spectacles. M. Arthuys uses giant 40ft square mirrors and sends his reflections much farther. 0 He says his wife first gave him the idea. She left her mirror at an angle that threw the sun’s rays against the wall opposite. But had he walked down any of the narrow, office lined side streets in thjp City of London he could have seen the same principle applied. In London we 1 hang a large reflector out from our windows to catch not the sunr-we can hardly hope for that—but a pale reflection from the sky. For generations these reflectors have stolen a ' little extra light for the countless old-fashioned, small windowed rooms that still serve as offices in the heart of London. • Arrangement of .Mirrors, M. Arthuys’ invention is not just a direct reflection from a single mirror sending the light in through a window.

By an arrangement of mirrors and lenses he can bring the sun’s rays into any room in any building, even into rooms that have no windows. In such rooms he can also arrange that as the stmrgoes down or behind a cloud electric light is at the same time switch- - ed on. ' On the roof he erects a large “master” mirror, mounted on a slowly rotating axis. The mirror is turned by a small oil engine of about of a horse-power. y The face of the mirror turns imperceptibly, following the course of the sun. To catch the rays of a sinking sun it must turn not only about its vertical axis but horizontally as well. It reflects the rays on to another large mirror which is stationary. Installations May Differ. From that point installations of this invention can differ. Either the rays collected on the second mirror can be shot down the outside face of a building to be picked up and relayed through windows by other mirrors projecting from the walls, or the sun can be canalised through flues and tubes just as if it were electricity. M. Arthuys claims that he can

handle sun rays from room to room and storey to storey as easily as an electrician can handle his flex. For instance, if this machine were incorporated in a new building as ap original fixture, the rays from the second mirror would be reflected straight down a vertical shaft running from the roof to the basement. At ceiling level of each storey small mirrors would project into this shaft and trap the sun as it streams down. These small mirrors reflect the light on -to the ceilings of the rooms surrounding the shaft or on to other fixed mirrors that can deflect the rays from room to room through small apertures high up near the ceilings. It is claimed that if the sun were generally “laid on” in office buildings, there would be a saving of from 35 to 80 per cent, in artificial lighting. For so long as the roof top still catches the sun each room in a building can be well sun lit.

Still More Ingenious.

Still more ingenious is the way in which M. Arthuys has connected his sun machine—which he calls -an “Arthel;” a name coined from the first three letters of his surname and the first three of the Greek word for sun, “Helios”—with the electricity supply of a building. The little motor that rotates the mirror to catch the sun on the roof is itself controlled by the sun through a mercury thermostatic device. When the sun shines the mercury rises and sets the motor running. When the sun goes down or is obscured the mercury falls. .

The falling mercury switches on the electric light throughout the rooms that are lit by the “ArtheL” Resistance coils could further’insure that as the sun fades so the electric lights glow brighter. The transition from sun .to artificial lighting could be made, gradual and unnoticeable.

M. Arthuys has thought of everything—even, to the cleaning of his ■mirrors. An automatic arm worked by the same little motor sweeps the upturned suncatcher mirror clean every time it grows dull with soot and dirt. By his sun tracking M. Arthuys brings into the house the most effective healing and germicidal agent known to science. Running Costs Negligible. A small “Arthel” costs about £2BO to install, but'its running costs are negligible—just a little oil once a year. It is in fact the nearest thing to perpetual motion yet invented.

The full size standard model to supply sun through a lafge hotel costs nearly £2OOO. It weighs 6 tonsand, provides a source of 32,000 candlepower of sunlight, enough to floodlight over 5500 square feet of ceiling. Already over 20 large “Arthels” are in use in Europe, An hotel in Brussels, a department store in Holland, a gas company in Barcelona are among the sensible undertakings that are now making the most of the sun’s invaluable rays.

It may only be a question of time before we will all be able to enjoy a full day’s sunshine without being on holiday. Some day our sun may even be laid on by a benevolent public utility company, a Metropolitan Sun Board or a British Sunshine Corporation—and all because a Frenchwoman one morning left her mirror crooked.

• ■ y ' : < Things- We Have Read