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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1756, 1 November 1905, Page 30

Remarks the very reverse of complimentary to Wellington’s street-light-ing are made in the course of an article on “The Gas Industry in New Zealand,” by Mr Albert Ford, in the issue of “The Gas World” (a London weekly) for September 16th. The author says:— “After fifteen years of accumulated electrical experience, the public lighting of Wellington is to-day the least efficient that the writer has had the misfortune to see anywhere on the five continents, inland Japanese' villages not excepted. Without going into full descriptive detail, suffice it to say that it does not make darkness visible, and that it is the derided butt of every observer of artificial lighting. No wonder ; for it is quite a common occurrence to find a—by courtesy—twenty candle-power bulb attached to an inverted ‘ saucepan lid ’ reflector, elevated 15ft from the street level, on the centre face of a 15in square telegraph post, at intervals of not less than 330 ft centres, thus dividing one candle-power over 900 square feet of road and footway surface. There are a few ‘arc spots’— about thirty-three distributed over eighty miles of streets. A tropical jungle illuminated by fireflies is a Crystal Palace illumination in comparison. The following table has been constructed as a standard of comparison:—Two glow-worm 6 equal one firefly; four fireflies equal one match-power; six matchpowers equal one incandescent electric street- light, Wellington.”