188 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the higher tropical and subtropical civilizations. Since inventions 

 reflect human needs, the demand for lighting apparatus was at a 

 minimum in the Tropics and it is evident that work connected with 

 arts and industries were preponderantly carried on in daylight. The 

 work periods varied somewhat for different occupations, but gener- 

 ally were massed on the fringes of the day before the sun had 

 reached his full power and when his rays begin to lose their burning 

 effect. It is evident, however, that the basic inventions which 

 underly the present science of artificial illumination were worked out 

 by endless more or less unconscious experiments by the inhabitants 

 of this zone. 



THE TEMPERATE ZONE 



Radically different conditions obtain in the Temperate Zone, with 

 its seasonal variations of the intensity and duration of light and 

 the climatic and economic stresses characteristic of the enviroment 

 of the most enlightened section of mankind. This zone furnishes 

 the greatest variety or variability of enviroment. It is the zone of 

 incentive. The arts of the Tropics transferred to the Temperate 

 Zone have reached their greatest development. Man and his arts 

 have reacted and interacted here to their fullest extent, and the 

 result instead of being climactic mark only the beginning. 



Of these developments the effects of illumination upon social life 

 and the ensuing reaction upon the inventions of devices to produce 

 better illumination reflect only one of many striking achievements 

 of progress. Nevertheless, the science of illumination, as we know it, is 

 very recent. The chief difference between the Tropical and Tem- 

 perate Zones in respect to illuminating apparatus of the noninventive 

 peroid is in the adaptation of such apparatus to the needs prescribed 

 by the enviroment. 



THE FEIGID ZONE 



The Eskimo, according to travelers, spend the long winter's night 

 in preparing their hunting equipment for the ensuing summer, fash- 

 ioning ivory, skin, and stone into objects of use, and they consume 

 much time outside of such economic pursuits in carving trinkets for 

 the children, masks, and other objects which display great inventive- 

 ness. 



The life of the Eskimo during the winter is not the struggle with 

 ennui which the civilized man fights when camped in the Arctic, 

 limited in action by the cold and the darkness, and hemmed in on 

 himself by such depressing conditions that he must find occupation 

 or die. The native, on the contrary, has ever before him a vast 

 outstreching need for tools of the best quality for taking the animals 

 which he not only requires to supply his food, but the materials for 

 clothing, transportation, and even the implements by which the ani- 



