With the launch last Monday of the Eclipse Computer Light four Rhode
Island businessmen feel they have gotten on the ergonomic bandwagon
early enough to have a booming success.
The concept for the light seems so simple — a task light that virtually
eliminates annoying glare from computer screens — some might wonder why
nobody had invented it already.
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The Eclipse is a rectangular-shaped light that attaches to the top of a
VDT with adhesives. Light is reflected up toward an adjustable visor,
which then deflects light onto the user’s keyboard and desktop. Though
there is plenty of soft light to illuminate the keyboard and desktop, no
light hits the VDT screen.
The inventor, Edward L. Shore, and his partners have formed a company
called OneTech, which is based on Acorn Street in Providence, to sell
the light and a planned line of ergonomic devices.
The Eclipse light joins a number of glare-reducing products already on
the market, including filter devices, which are placed over VDT screens
to reduce glare. At a national computer industry trade show last month,
Microsoft announced its work on a new technology that should make text
easier to read on VDTs.
And about eight years ago, an eye exam and new type of glasses, called
the PRIO System, were introduced. PRIO lets a doctor measure a patient’s
response to working on computers, by simulating the pixels from a
computer screen and seeing how a patient’s eyes focus on those
characters. Doctors using the system can prescribe special glasses with
certain tints to reduce glare and help eyes focus, according to Dr.
Katherine Rispoli, a Middletown optometrist who has been using the
system for about a year-and-a-half.
Though there’s a lot of competition from products designed to reduce
glare, Jeffrey M. Jacober, a partner in OneTech, said they are confident
the Eclipse light will do well, because there are no other lights like
it on the market at this time.
“The fact is that we’re first, and in marketing that’s half the game: to
be first,” Jacober said.
OneTech has applied for national and international patents on the
device.
Jacober said they also think that people will eventually move away from
the popular goose-neck lamps, now found in many offices. Bulbs used in
those are so bright, he said, that users wind up bending the lamp and
bouncing the light off nearby walls to avoid glare problems.
Shore, who owns Illumination Concepts & Engineering Inc. in North
Kingstown, said he was reading a Wall Street Journal article several
years ago, when he started formulating the idea for the invention. The
article reported that computer-related eyestrain had bumped extreme room
temperatures from its position as the number one complaint of office
workers across the nation, he said.
“The number one cause of eyestrain is improper lighting,” Shore said.
Many offices have too much lighting, which can create glare problems, he
explained. In some offices employees wind up removing bulbs from
overhead lights to reduce glare and eyestrain, which is actually one
solution recommended by the AOA.
Over the past decade or so, the trend in designing office lighting has
been away from the old beer-strip lights, which look like upside down
aluminum ice cube trays, to indirect lighting, according to Shore.
Indirect lights are designed so that light doesn’t shine directly down
into the work area. Instead light is bounced off the ceiling and walls.
After designing the Eclipse light, however, Shore realized he would need
different marketing expertise and turned to a friend, Jacober, for
assistance. That move eventually resulted in the creation of OneTech.
They have also partnered with Stanley J. Wachtenheim and Michael
Moskowitz, who is president and runs day-to-day operations.
Although she had not seen the Eclipse light demonstrated as of last
week, Dr. Rispoli indicated that such a device might be beneficial.
“Anything that prevents glare is helpful.”
Rispoli said the problem is becoming so common that she and her
colleagues routinely ask patients about computer use during exams.
“It’s not only an increase in the number of people using computers, but
also an increase in the amount of time people are on the computers,” she
explained. “Now people are using the computers four, five hours at a
time or broken up four or five hours a day.”
And her patients aren’t just office workers either, Rispoli said. Her
patient roster has included senior citizens, who spent some time tracing
their genealogy on a computer, and college students, who use computers
for school work.
OneTech began selling Eclipse for $59.95 through its Web site, www.com-
puterlight.com, last Monday. Before the end of the first quarter in 1999
the light will be featured in several high end catalogs, according to
Moskowitz.
