Illuminometers and Their Use

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 2, 1 December 1908, Page 60

Illuminometers and Their Use

The use of illuminometers would enable architects to invite tenders for electric lighting or gasfitting on the basis of specified illumination in candle-feet at certain points with specified lamps, globes, &c, and thus secure effects which had been found pleasing and satisfactory elsewhere. At present few architects would have the faintest idea of what illumination in candle-feet to specify at any given point, few still would know how to take the necessary simple measurements to see whether they

had obtained it. But illumination in candle-feet at certain points (and not candle-power at uncertain points) is precisely what architects are most particularly concerned with. Their province is the result, the means lie in the hands of the engineer. At present architects know a little about the means and nothing at all about the result until they see it. New and economical systems of artificial lighting are constantly being placed on the market and widely used. Whereas a few years ago flatflame gas lamps and arc and Be.p. to ]6c.p. incandescent electric lamps comprised practically all systems of lighting, there are today a dozen or more well-known systems whose illumination differs from these older ones almost as widely as they differed from candles and oil lamps. Every day it becomes more important that the architect should be able to specify at least the general distribution of his artificial lighting and the illumination in candle-feet that he requires at every point. Not until he can do this can he compare intelligently the relative advantage and economy of different systems for the particular purpose which he may have in hand. The fact that he cannot do so is not so much his fault as that of engineers and scientists, who in this country have so neglected the science of illumination that the architect has no suitable textbooks from which to obtain the necessary information, and very few experts, indeed, who can assist him. This fact is clearly shown in the curricula of the different architectural schools. An examination of any syllabus shows, perhaps, one lecture on window areas to third or fourth stu* dents, the subject of illumination from different systems of artificial lighting being ignored as completely as it is in the papers of the aualifvinar technical examinations.