Illuminating Group hears Kimble Toplite sky lighting system

Illuminating Group Hears Kimble Toplite

Skylighting System Described at Meet

• KIMBLE'S new daylighting system was described this week to the National Technical Conference of the Illuminating Engineering Society in New York as taking the best light the sun has to offer and rejecting undesirable heat and glare.

In a report prepared by Dr. R. A. Boyd, director of the daylighting laboratory of the University of Michigan, and John Lyon Reid, A.I.A., San Francisco architect, it was explained how prisms in glass units of the skylighting system control transmission of daylight and the heat of the sun.

Dr. Boyd said that in summer months when the sun is highest in the sky, the prisms reject most of the hot rays, and in the Winter, when the sun is lower, the prisms accept a higher percentage of southern light and solar heat. They accept a maximum of cool northern light at all times, he said.

Known as Kimble Toplite, the skylighting system was developed in the University of Michigan daylighting laboratory under the sponsorship of Kimble Glass Company, subsidiary of Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Dr. Boyd stated that Toplite takes advantage of the fact that illumination of a roof surface on darkest days is more than twice as great as illumination of wall surface.

He explained that the product can be used in conjunction with exterior wall windows as a supplemental source of highest quality daylight for dep interiors or as the only source of daylight.

Dr. Boyd declared that because of its advantages, Toplite give architects a variety of design possibilities not available before because of glare and other problems common to conventional skylighting systems. He said tests showed excellent possibilities for applications of the system in factories, offices, shopping centers and schools.

Two years of research have gone into the product and it has been thoroughly tested in a mock classroom built on the roof of the engineering research building at Michigan.

The Toplite system is available in prefabricated panels in three sizes, three by three feet, three by six feet and four by four feet. The panels consist of hollow, hermetically sealed glass units, each 10 ⅝ inches square and three inches thick. The glass units are set in aluminum grids on 12-inch centers and are claimed completely weather-proof.