ART : Bright Idea : A father-daughter team from Pasadena have invented a light source that may help preserve museum objects and cut costs too.

Putting light on the subject is not always a good thing when it comes to art or historical documents.

“We are losing part of our heritage because it is fading away,” said Edwin Robinson, lighting engineer for the National Museum of American History in Washington, D. C. Robinson, who will retire from that post this year after 24 years of service, has long warned museums that inappropriate lighting has caused severe fading in paintings, drawings and documents.

“Take the Declaration of Independence, for example,” he said, speaking from his office at the museum, which is part of the Smithsonian system. “The signatures are so faded that just about the only one that can still be read is John Hancock’s.

“It is a very serious problem.”

The possible solution--one that could revolutionize how museums, galleries and archives display light-sensitive art--will soon be in use at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park. Following a promising small-scale test this summer of a fiber-optic system invented by Jack and Ruth Ellen Miller of Pasadena, the museum is outfitting an entire gallery with illuminators that eliminate the heat and parts of the light spectrum that can cause fading.

“It’s very exciting,” said James Nottage, museum curator. “There are wonderful things in this collection that we have been afraid to show because of the damage light can cause. And there are other items that we could not show in light bright enough to bring out the detail.

“This system could change all that.”

The installation of the new system, which will light the artifacts, costumes and documents from the Old West in the museum’s Spirit of Romance Gallery, is scheduled to be completed in November. Eight of the new illuminators, each of which has 32 separate fiber-optic lights that can be individually focused and filtered, will replace the 57 standard incandescent lights now used.

As an added benefit, the museum will realize an estimated 70% energy saving. The new system not only consumes less electricity, it reduces air-conditioning costs because of the far lower levels of heat emanating from the lights. The savings are so dramatic that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is donating almost $20,000 toward the costs of installing the system in the gallery and a study of the results.

The grant is one in a series that DWP has given to public and commercial institutions for the installation of energy-savings equipment. But according to Ned Bassin, DWP manager of project analysis and support, this is the first time that the department has given this kind of support to an experimental program.

“It’s important to us because if this system proves itself, it has implications for several of our customers,” Bassin said. “Not only museums, but also some retailers could use this.”

And if the system eventually goes into wide use, it could bring an incredible bounty to the Millers, a friendly father and daughter team whose workshop-laboratory is in a decidedly low-tech, modest building in a residential section of Pasadena.

But don’t let appearances fool you. They are not struggling amateurs.

Jack Miller, 62, is the kind of inventor that children’s books used to celebrate. His more than 100 patents, which line a wall in one room of the workshop, include a few for lighting equipment. A popular type of track lighting he invented, for example, is sold under the Capri trade name. But Miller is a generalist, earning patents also for weapons, exercise equipment, toys, auto-repair devices, medical monitors and a vacuum cleaner.

“I have a lot of fun,” said the bespectacled Miller, who wears a white lab coat when he works. He walks briskly from room to room, showing off a few of his inventions. There is a small, energy-efficient fluorescent light that screws into a regular incandescent lamp socket, a vinyl truck tailgate that can also be used as a promotional sign, and a new line of flying Transformer-type toy gliders.

Probably his most famous invention is a laser light device that can trace the path of rounds fired from a high-powered automatic weapon. It was seen by millions watching the Persian Gulf conflict on television.

He also invented a trapeze-like device, popular in the 1980s, that allowed people wearing gravity boots to swing into an upside-down position. “I bought my Rolls-Royce with the profits from that one,” he said, with a chuckle.

But lights have long had a special allure for him. “For years,” he said, “whenever my wife would turn on a light switch, she never knew what would happen.”

His daughter, Ruth Ellen, 30, joined him in his endeavors upon her graduation from Cal Poly Pomona with a business degree. She took over most of the business aspects of the inventing, which are considerable, he said. But Ruth Ellen also shared with her father a natural curiosity about how things work and how they could be made to work better. Her own discoveries have led to her being listed as principal or co-inventor on 11 patents, including the fiber-optic illuminator the Autry is installing.

The Millers’ interest in museum lighting came from hearing Robinson speak about the problem of fading two years ago at a meeting of the International Engineering Society. “We are art collectors ourselves, so we were intrigued by the problem,” said Ruth Ellen, pointing out a painting in her office by Peter Ellenshaw, best known for his backgrounds used in numerous movies, including “Star Wars.”

“But first we had to learn quantum physics,” she said, in the same way that most people would talk about learning to use their answering machines.

The Millers quickly determined that they would seek an answer in fiber optics. Several other inventors had the same idea.

“These fiber-optic systems are coming out of the woodwork,” said Robinson at the American history museum. “We have seen several here.” He said that none of the systems presented to them has entirely solved the fundamental problems of protecting light-sensitive objects from fading.

But the Millers believe that their system goes far beyond others that have been produced. Their illuminator, which they are selling for about $500, consists of a base unit engineered and ventilated to dispel heat even before the light enters the fiber strands.

The strands themselves are made from the same plexiglass used in jets. They are flexible, strong and do not add color imbalances to white light. And they are used in a way that eliminates the potentially damaging infrared and ultraviolet portions of the spectrum.

Their most novel innovations, however, are focusing and filtering devices that fit onto individual strands, greatly increasing each basic illuminator’s ability to light a variety of objects.

The filters can even be used to tune out all the parts of the color spectrum wasted on an object. “When you see something red, what you are really seeing is the red part of the spectrum that is reflected off the object,” Jack said. “The rest is wasted.” The “wasted” part of the color spectrum is absorbed by the object and causes damage to a dye’s molecular structure, the Millers believe.

Final results of the testing will not be available for about a year. In the meantime, the Millers have numerous other projects, including some involving fiber optics, to keep them busy.

And Ruth Ellen spends some of her time dealing with investors. She turns them all away.

“We get endless people wanting to invest,” Jack said. “But our motto is, ‘Start small, plan big and don’t borrow.’ ”