Abstract
DR. M. LUCKIESH and Dr. F. K. Moss, of the Lighting Research Laboratory of the General Electric oCompany of America, reported at a meeting of the Optical Society of America on October 17 an interesting property of the new sodium vapour lamp which will:shortly be upon the market. According to Science Service, they stated that for revealing the details of small colourless objects the yellow single colour light from sodium vapour is definitely and markedly better than the light emitted by ordinary incandescent tungsten filament lamps. In addition to revealing the details of small objects better, the speed of retinal impression is also higher. On the average, the proportion of the light reflected by a large number of coloured specimens is much the same for both illuminants, although there is wide variation for individual colours. Sodium light enhances brightness contrast between various pairs of colours in more cases than tungsten light does, but some of the exceptions are important. To eyes accustomed to white light, the yellow sodium light sometimes produces curious phenomena. Experiments were made to find out if there was a difference in the nervous muscular strain produced by reading under white light and under sodium light respectively, but no difference could be detected in the human eye after subjection to the two illuminants.
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Yellow Sodium Light for Detecting Colourless Details. Nature 132, 890 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132890b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132890b0