Street Illumination

1917

"Illuminating engineers are now turning all their energies toward a system for the proper distribution of street lighting," writes Walter R. Howell in Good Health. "They have unanimously agreed that the best light is that from a globe that is dense enough not to reveal the form of the actual light within, but to give the effect of light streaming forth from the globe."

The reason for this is that street lamps are necessarily against a dark background, and the amount of glare upon the eyes depends to a great degree upon the background against which the light is seen. An electric light, unshaded, against a dark velvet wall covering, for instance, will be found much more trying to the eyes than would the same light with a white wall paper behind it.


The Name of Arizona

Arizona, probably Arizonac in its original form, was the native and probably Pima name of the place — of a hill, valley, stream or some other local feature — just south of the modern boundary, in the mountains still so called, on the headwaters of the stream flowing past Saric, where the famous Planchas de Plata mine was discovered in the middle of the eighteenth century, the name being first known to the Spaniards in that connection and being applied to the mining camp or real de minas. The aboriginal meaning of the term is not known. The name should probably be written and pronounced Arisona. as our English sound of z does not occur in Spanish. — H. H. Bancroft, "History of the Pacific States."

After Hours, Railway Mean Checking For Dropped Coins

New York, 1893

Nickel Hunters

Anyone who chances to take a stroll just before sunrise along the line of any of the surface railways in New York, will be sure to see from two to a dozen men walking near the tracks with hands in pockets and heads bent down. He may also observe that the conductors and drivers on the infrequent horse cars of that early hour also have their eyes turned earthward. They are all hunting for money.

During the night, and particularly when the after theater homeward rush is on, the conductors are very busy collecting fares and making change by the dim light of the car lamps. In the process both they and the passengers allow more or less small coin to slip through their fingers, and it is for the dimes and nickels that have rolled to the pavement that search is made at dawn. The change that falls beneath the floor slats of the closed cars belongs to the cleaners at the stables.