Automatic Street Lighting.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 16, 19 October 1910, Page 54

Automatic Street Lighting.

Why should sober-minded citizens who are in their homes and safe in bed by ten o’clock at night pay lighting taxes for others, who, being of a jovial turn of mind, prefer to stay in cafes, clubs, or bars until midnight, and do not return home until the early hours of the morning? Manifestly it is unfair, but in Germany this question has now been answered in a way which will please the earnest taxpayers, and probably prove a terror to the late night birds. To the village of Zarkau. near Glogau, ia Silesia, must be given the honour of installing a system of automatic electric, lighting for the streets. The electric lights burn every ,light from the outskirts of Glogau •through the village of Zarkau, a distance of about a kilometre, until ten o’clock, at a mutual cost to the community in general. Then they are switched out. At each end of this kilomptre stretch, on an iron pillar, stands a small iron cupboard lighted by a tiny electric light. Those persons who are out after ten o’clock wishing to hav- their way lighted must insert a fen-pfennig piece into a slot in the side of the iron cupboard. Then the nine lamps placed along this stretch burst forth into a twelve minute light, thus enabling the passenger to find his way in lightness to his or her house. The scheme is working in a satisfactory way, and it seems quite probable that other German villages and towns will follow the example of Zarkau and instal the automatic lighting system to be put inuo operation after ton o’clock. There are possibilities in this idea if switched on to New Zealand. Supposing, for instance but no matter.