Artificial Light: Its Influence upon CivilizationLuckiesh, Matthew
History
Artificial Light: Its Influence upon Civilization
Luckiesh, Matthew
Electric lighting; Lighting -- History
Another complication arises in the variation in visibility or luminosity
of energy of wave-lengths within the range of the visible spectrum.
Obviously, no amount of energy incapable of exciting the sensation of
light will be visible. The energy of those wave-lengths near the ends
of the visible spectrum will be inefficient in producing light. That
energy which excites the sensation of yellow-green produces the greatest
luminosity per unit of energy and is the most efficient light. The
visibility or luminous efficiency of radiant energy may be ranged
approximately in this manner according to the colors aroused:
yellow-green, yellow, green, orange, blue-green, red, blue, deep red,
violet.
Newton, an English scientist, first described the discovery of the
visible spectrum and this is of such fundamental importance in the
science of light that the first paragraph of his original paper in the
"Transactions of the Royal Society of London" is quoted as follows:
In the Year 1666 (at which time I applied my self to the
Grinding of Optick Glasses of other Figures than Spherical) I
procured me a Triangular Glass-Prism, to try therewith the
celebrated Phaenomena of Colours. And in order thereto, having
darkened my Chamber, and made a small Hole in my Window-Shuts,
to let in a convenient Quantity of the Sun's Light, I placed my
Prism at its Entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to
the opposite Wall. It was at first a very pleasing
Divertisement, to view the vivid and intense Colours produced
thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider them
more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong
Form; which, according to the receiv'd Law of Refractions, I
expected should have been circular. They were terminated at the
Sides with streight Lines, but at the Ends the Decay of Light
was so gradual, that it was difficult to determine justly what
was the Figure, yet they seemed Semicircular.
Even Newton could not have had the faintest idea of the great
developments which were to be based upon the spectrum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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