Low Light

There was a show on the Discovery Channel about things your mother told you that weren't true. One of the topics it discussed was dim light being hard on the eyes. Their conclusion was "Dim light can't hurt your eyes any more than it can hurt a camera."

My first year away from home I read an article suggesting that you should read with a 100 watt bulb. It puzzled me because it didn't say at what distance the bulb should be from what you are reading and the distance is actually more important than the wattage in affecting the light on the page.

That should have been a clue that the person didn't know what he was talking about, but because "it was written" I went out and got a 100 watt bulb. My impression from the start was that it was too bright from about 4 feet away, and after awhile I replaced it with a dimmer one.

I practically enjoy turning out the lights in an office where I work occasionally. If it is daylight it isn't as bright but it is so much more beautiful, and always different. The dimmer part is not the slightest problem to me even if I am reading.

I recently counted the lights on the floor of that building. 153 lights at 80 watts each, comes out to just over 12,000 watts, or 12 kwh every hour. In one day just lighting this floor uses more electricity than my house does in 2 weeks. If everyone shared my taste in lighting, hardly any of them would be needed.