"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
On Tuesday, 13 March 2018 08:11:10 UTC, Brian Gaff wrote:
I'd imagine that depends on the quality of the shade. Don't you think
shades
are the most pointless things every invented?
After all you go for more efficient lighting solutions yet try to block
some
of the light with a shade.

I propose nice to look at sockets and lamps instead.
Brian

Trouble there is that they aren't very nice to look at, and if you can
look at them then they aren't bright enough to illuminate a large area
very well.
I thought the idea of a shade was so that yuo couldn;t see a really bright
bulb and that the light got diffucused by the shade which could also add a
bit of colour.

Exactly. The purpose of a (translucent) shade is to increase the effective
size of the illuminated area (and maybe to direct the light a bit more from
being omnidirectional) so it's more diffuse and less of a point source.
That's why in the days of tungsten bulbs, they started frosting the inside
of the glass so the whole bulb was a uniform brightness and you didn't get a
thin filament of brightness which tended to leave more of an after-image on
the retina if you happened to look at the bulb.