Red light

“ When the Red Roof Fell
Abruptly a green light ran through the rosy haze beneath us, and that dreadful twisting bar of radiance—that living, alien tongue of fire—the serpent-like head of the Lord of Flame, was thrust up out of the flickering violet! With its strange, writhing motion, it swept in a wide arc, as though it saw us! It searched the sky, and then drew back in alarm! The terrible, rhythmic throb of the emerald gleam in it grew faster! ”

“ Red is truly a delightful colour to deal with in shadowed interiors, its sensitiveness to light, changing from colour-tinted darkness to palpitating ruby, and even to flame colour, on the slightest invitation of day-or lamp-light, makes it like a living presence. It is especially valuable at the entrance of the home, where it seems to meet one with almost a human welcome. ”

“ If light of one wave length is used, as red light, the regions of reinforcement and interference are shown by red and dark rings, while if white light is used, the ring where red light interferes, yields its complementary color, greenish blue. ”

“ Light is admitted through occasional apertures—some natural, some made by man. It is not as vivid as that of the external world, but subdued and beautifully soft, is ample indeed for all purposes by day, like the pale red of the shade in the external world. Even at night artificial light is not ordinarily required in the open air, the shade of the red light of night being sufficient. ”

“ It was small compared to the rest of the comet, but of such an intensity that against its light the rest was as shadow. Red is a terrible color; but this red had the terror of hell!
“ 'It seemed to be living; like the evil eye of some magnetic devil, winking, blinking, and shooting red fire into the onrushing coma. Great wreaths of hot splendor shot out from its rim, one upon another, a whirling, blinding, dazzle of spasmodic ascending glory. ”

“ If we increase them in the same proportion, the red will look brighter than the green. In other words, the red light will, to our vision, increase or fade away more rapidly with a given amount of change than the green light will. ”

“ To distinguish this light from others on the coast, it is made to revolve horizontally, and to exhibit a bright light of the natural appearance, and a red-coloured light, alternately, both respectively attaining their greatest strength or most luminous effect in the space of every four minutes; during that period, the bright light will, to a distant observer, appear like a star of the first magnitude, which, after attaining its full strength, is gradually eclipsed to total darkness ”

“ Thus the yellow spectrum of the setting sun thrown on the luminous sky, becomes blue, and changes with the colour or brightness of the clouds on which it appears. The red part of light being capable of struggling through thick and resisting mediums which intercept all other colours—is likewise the cause why the sun appears red when seen through a fog,—why distant light, though transmitted through blue or green glass, appears red—why lamps at a distance, seen through the smoke of a long street, are red, while those that are near, are white. ”

“ We saw the little red lanterns blazing forth from almost every other house, and being of an inquisitive turn we made inquiries and learned the above facts. They look very odd, and on a dark night one can see nothing but the red light gleaming forth like a danger signal. ”

“ Ordinary white light or daylight is a mixture of many coloured lights as seen in the rainbow, and when refracted, the blue is bent more than the green, the green more than the yellow, and the yellow more than the red. So that using a single lens the focus of the blue light is nearer the lens than the focus of the red light and the others come in between. ”

“ First, because it conveys this notion of filling the world with one private folly; and secondly, because of the profound idea involved in the choice of colour. Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through. It glows in the blood which sustains and in the fire which destroys us, in the roses of our romance and in the awful cup of our religion. ”

“ A recent method of treatment is that by colored light. Sunshine, prismatically dissected, is known to vibrate at a rate of about four hundred million for red and eight hundred million for blue. The different rays of sunlight therefore must have different effects upon the world of living things, and red light must produce conditions of less violent vibration, blue light of quickened vibration. ”

“ We are familiar with the effects of red which are stimulating, exciting, or irritating. The toreador, recognizing this principle, waves a flaming red mantle before the bull. Blue has an exactly opposite effect. It quiets and soothes, and when it runs into violet, it becomes depressing. Experiment with purple lights and you will find that they give a note of gloom, mystery, or of impending disaster. Yellow is the color that brings gaiety and light-heartedness, as you will recall when you contrast your own feelings on a sunshiny day and on a gray day. ”

“ LIGHTING. Artificial light is generally produced by raising some body to a high temperature. If the temperature of a solid body be greater than that of surrounding bodies it parts with some of its energy in the form of radiation. Whilst the temperature is low these radiations are not of a kind to which the eye is sensitive; they are exclusively radiations less refrangible and of greater wave-length than red light, and may be called infra-red. As the temperature is increased the infra-red radiations increase, but presently there are added radiations which the eye perceives as red light. ”

“ In that red glow I always felt and feel more safe, as well as more comfortable, than in the daylight—quite irrationally, for we know the night is the appointed day of such as love the darkness better than light, and evil walks thereby. ”

“ The succession of red and white lights is produced by the revolution of a frame whose different sides present red and white lights, and these afford three separate distinctions, namely, alternate red and white, the succession of two white lights after one red, and the succession of two red lights after one white light. ”

“ But measuring the actual brightness of the red light or the green light which was used for a particular series of tests, and the variations in their brightnesses, was not so simple a matter as might appear from the statements which have just been made. The influence of the light filters themselves upon the brightness must be taken into account. ”

“ In the red colour we have another striking example of an exceedingly common phenomenon which is habitually disregarded; indeed I can find no record of its ever having been noticed at all. The fact is that whenever a bright image is suddenly formed upon the retina after a period of comparative darkness, this image appears for a short time to be surrounded by a narrow coloured border, the colour, under ordinary conditions of illumination, being red. ”

“ Some lighthouses throw a steady red light, others a steady white light, others flashes of white, others flashes of red, others alternate flashes of red and white, and in many places they are arranged so that a white light is visible from vessels in the channels or in safe waters, while a red sector causes a red light to be thrown over the shallow or dangerous waters. ”

“ Red glass does not change light waves, but simply suppresses all but the red rays; and since there are no red rays in the mercury-vapor light the result of the red globe would be to suppress all the light. ”

“ He glanced round at the arrangements with approval.
“Red light,” he said, indicating the shaded lamps, “has the lowest rate of vibration. Materialisations are dissipated by strong light—won’t form, or hold together—in rapid vibrations.” ”

“ So that, if a star were shining with pure red light, it might by approaching very rapidly be caused to appear yellow, or even blue or indigo, according to the rate of approach; while, if a star were shining with pure indigo light, it might by receding very rapidly be caused to appear green or yellow, or even orange or red. ”

“ For because red Lead appears red when illuminated with white Light, wherein all sorts of Rays are equally mix'd, and in the green Light all sorts of Rays are not equally mix'd, the Excess of the yellow-making, green-making and blue-making Rays in the incident green Light, will cause those Rays to abound so much in the reflected Light, as to draw the Colour from red towards their Colour. ”

“ A beam of white light is formed by the union of innumerable different waves whose lengths have almost every possible value lying between certain limits. The wave-length of red light is such that there are 33,000 waves in an inch, while that of violet light is but little more than half that of red light. ”

“ But the low hiss and sputter of the current remained. And the light-beam grew. Darkness at first; then a radiance of faint dull red, streaming down from our projector; red and then up through the spectrum to violet ”

“ If white light (sunlight, for example) passes through a glass prism, we see a series of rainbow-tinted colours. Anyone can notice this effect when sunlight is shining through any kind of cut glass--the stopper of a wine decanter, for instance. If, instead of catching with the eye the coloured lights as they emerge from the glass prism, we allow them to fall on a screen, we shall find that they pass, by continuous gradations, from red at the one end of the screen, through orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, to violet at the other end. ”

“ For example, if one looks at the blue sky, notably at noon-time, on the side away from the sun, or at the morning or evening sky, shining yellow and red, one quickly becomes conscious of how our eyes take hold of the particular contribution which Light and Dark make to one or other of the two colour appearances. ”

“ If the light of an electric lamp be caused to form a clear sunlike disk upon a white screen, the gradual change of this light by augmented precipitation into deep glowing red, resembling the colour of the sun when seen through fine London smoke, is exceedingly striking. ”

“ The colour of lightning varies very much. We have the white, the blue, the violet, and red. The colour depends upon the distance and intensity of the lightning, and the more there is of it the whiter the light. We can illustrate the varied hues of the electric “fluid” by passing a spark through the receiver of an air-pump. If the air be rarefied, or there be a vacuum, we shall perceive a blue or violet light. Therefore we may conclude that the blue and violet flashes have birth in high strata of the atmosphere. ”

“ Many people are so color-blind as to be unable to distinguish a red from a green light—a fact brought out some years since very markedly in an examination for railway service in England. An astigmatic person is almost, if not quite blind, to a fine line running in some one direction. ”

“ But, were red-violet used in the shadow, its effect would be false, because, in order for yellow-green to call up its pure complementary, the light itself must be an intense yellow-green—so intense in fact that the local colour of the object (whatever it is) is entirely absorbed and unable to influence the light. Then, and only then, would the shadow be pure purple, for the local colour, being nullified, would not interfere with the optical sensation of complementaries. ”

“ We apprehend it as red wherever we may be situated, so that, in contrast to the case of apparent shape, it might appear as though we were justified in claiming that the light was really red, i.e., red in an objective world devoid of all observers. But if now, instead of occupying a succession of various positions at rest with respect to the luminous source, we move towards or recede from the light with sufficient speed, it will change colour. ”

“ The red glow and the green sun are most likely due to a common cause. The same medium which will give by transmitted light a green color to objects viewed through it, will, by the universal law of the absorption and reflection of light, reflect the red rays. ”

“ The easiest way is to place a red and a blue surface side by side under an electric light whose intensity can be gradually lessened by means of a sliding resistance. Here, as much as in the natural phenomenon, our reason finds it difficult to acknowledge that the surface gleaming in a whitish sheen should be the one which ordinarily appears as darkling blue, and that the one disappearing into darkness should be the surface which normally presents itself as radiant red. ”

“ The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify—it was like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: ‘This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. ”

“ Red glass for instance adds nothing to sunlight. The light does not get dyed red by passing through the glass; all that the red glass does is to stop and absorb a large part of the sunlight; it is opaque to the larger portion, but it is transparent to that particular portion which affects our eyes with the sensation of red. The prism acts like a sieve sorting out [Pg 184] the different kinds of light. Coloured media act like filters, stopping certain kinds but allowing the rest to go through. ”