Use blackout to call

DB
From: (Dawn Baird-Chleborad)
DB
Subject: Use blackout to call for less lighting
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Date: 20 Aug 2003 06:59:32 -0700
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Organization: http://groups.google.com/

DB horrid acorn-style lamp posts...
DB
DB Oh, but they're so very nostalgic...
DB
DB ...oops.
DB
DB LOL. I must admit that in the years before I was into Astronomy (B.A.)
DB I probably would have thought they were really neat too. I just had no
DB clue. )
DB . . .

The typical acorn lamp does spray light sidewats and upwards. So,
we in New York developed a neat trick. The globe on the acorn lamp is
fluted to deflect the side beams downward. From afar you see a weakly
glowing lamp with no glare or dazzle. When you approach, you enter the
lightcone under it and get full ground illumination.
In addition, the new lamps have the bulb set higher in the cage so
the top cap acts as a partial shield.
The early application of this design was in Atlantic Av in Boerum
Hill, brooklyn, dueing a rehab of the road. This is 'Main Street' for
the nave with an effort to give it a sort of North African -Arabian
motif. The lamps are quite pretty by day and by night and do not
excessively add to luminous graffiti.
An other major application is along Eastern Parkway, thru Crown
Heights, also Brooklyn. This is a truw 'builevard' in the French
sense, laid out in the mid 19th century as a 'pastoral corridor'
linking various parts of the city. There are four (or six, I forget)
'lanes' of these lamps along the street, lighting both the curbs and
medians.
In Central Park and other city parks these lamps are widely used.
Here there is a good reason why we don't use full-cutoff lamps. The
park paths are winding and twisting with no clue ahead for the next
turn. Having a dim glow from the lamps along the paths gives the
visual clue needed at night to walk around.
The Parks Department has a program of gradually replacing the
globes on the lamps already in place but with the current shrinkage in
funding, this project is in slomo. In the meantime, the department
will insert cardboard or paper masks in the present, all-spray, globes
to block annoying side beams.
What does happen occasinally is that when a fluted globe breaks,
the replacement may be one of the leftover clear or forsted ones. Man!
You really see the effect in a line of these lamps! We have to call
attention to the wrong globe and get it replaced again.
It's not the shape or style of the lamp, but how its rays are
emitted.

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