Light & Heat

Twenty-three per cent of U. S. citizens have poor eyesight before they reach 20, 48% before 40. Today more than 63,000 are blind and 100 times as many becoming blind. Heaviest strain on most people's eyes occurs during their school days. Last week the American Standards Association issued a new code calling for considerably more light in U. S. classrooms to save children's eyesight.

This report, American Recommended Practice of School Lighting, was based on a study sponsored by the Illuminating Engineering Society and American Institute of Architects. It declared many schoolchildren had so little light for their work that they suffered from eyestrain, irritability, headaches. Even on a bright day children in the darkest part of a classroom may get only five foot-candles,* one-twentieth as much light as those near the windows, and on a dark day illumination of their desks may drop as low as one footcandle. The investigators claimed tests showed children did 28% better in reading when they had a minimum of 20 foot-candles.

The report recommended a minimum of 15 foot-candles for classrooms and offices, and a photoelectric control to turn on lights when illumination falls below the minimum. Because glare is as harmful as dimness, it also advised that glossy finish on furniture and glass tops on tables be eliminated, that pictures be varnished instead of glassed, that desks be shaded from the sun, that indirect lighting be used.

But the new code (which practically doubled the eight foot-candle minimum recommended by the same groups in 1932) produced more heat than light. For to pour 15 foot-candles on every pupil's desk would cost U. S. schools untold millions ($1,000,000 a year in New York City alone). Even before the code was issued, the National Council on Schoolhouse Construction, which was represented on a committee of 15 groups collaborating in the study, had adopted a resolution in convention withholding approval of the 15 foot-candle minimum until "scientific" tests had been made. A member of the committee, Miss Alice Barrows, the U. S. Office of Education's specialist in school building problems, refused to vote for the report, declared the matter should be studied by disinterested scientists. University of Minnesota's Miles A. Tinker pooh-poohed the tests cited in the report, said his own studies had shown no gain in speed of reading in light stronger than three foot-candles. Meanwhile, Raymond V. Long, Virginia's director of school building, charged that "the study reported by the society has been financed by utility companies."

To all this the American Standards Association retorted that representatives of 14 reputable organizations, including the representative of the National Council on Schoolhouse Construction, had voted for the new code.

-Foot-candle: The illumination provided by a standard candle on a surface one foot away. Intensity of light in the sun on a bright day is about 10,000 foot-candles, in the shade, 1,000.

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