Myron Kahn, 85; His Polarizing Light Panels Cut Glare in Offices

Myron Kahn, inventor of polarizing ceiling light panels that greatly reduce glare in offices, schools and libraries, and which eventually became the darling of economists, ergonomists and conservationists, has died. He was 85.

Kahn, founder of what became Polarized Corp. of America, died Nov. 19 in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica of heart failure, said his son, attorney Robert A. Kahn.

A native New Yorker who went to work in his teens, earned a high school diploma at night school and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Kahn came to Southern California after the war with an idea.

Inspired by a relative who had created an early version of the polarized lenses used in sunglasses, Kahn developed (and in the 1960s patented) light-polarizing plastic ceiling panels to cut glare from fluorescent light tubes.

In 1947 he established Polarized Illumination Inc., which later used the names Polarized Lighting International and Polarized Corp. of America, based in Tarzana.

White light, he said, is created by horizontal and vertical waves. Kahn’s desk-sized laminated ceiling panels convert the horizontal light vibrations -- the ones that ricochet off computer screens and other surfaces to create glare -- into vertical rays, more easily absorbed by objects and reflected back to the eye.

With glare reduced, the eye is able to see richer colors, greater depth and texture and other details, sharpening overall vision.

Kahn’s ceiling panels were used widely in commercial buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s and showcased prominently when Disneyland opened in 1955 at the now-removed Monsanto House of the Future in Tomorrowland.

But Kahn’s invention came into its own in the 1970s when officials and consumers became increasingly concerned about dwindling oil and natural gas supplies. Kahn demonstrated that his panels could reduce electricity costs -- by cutting the number of fluorescent bulbs needed to provide the same or better visibility -- by up to one-third or even one-half and lower air-conditioning bills by a fourth. Ergonomists found that because of improved visual acuity when the panels were placed between lightbulbs and workers, computer users’ headaches and eye fatigue also decreased markedly.

About 1976, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power retrofitted its headquarters atop Bunker Hill downtown with 17,000 of Kahn’s panels and immediately was able to remove 40% of its lightbulbs and reduce its energy costs by 22%.

Southern California Edison began offering rebates up to $50,000 per facility to businesses and government agencies that used the panels. As computers became ubiquitous in offices around the world, Suffolk County, N.Y., passed the first law requiring the panels to be placed in ceilings above all its video display terminals.

Nevertheless, builders elsewhere -- Europe, South Africa, Australia -- were quicker to order Kahn’s panels than any contractors in the U.S.

Kahn blamed American energy companies and manufacturers of air-conditioning and lighting equipment for protecting their profits over consumer efficiency, testifying before the California Energy Commission in 1986: “Hundreds of millions of dollars are still being wasted on inefficient lighting techniques, and the resulting higher energy costs serve only the interests of the utility, lamp and air-conditioning industries.”

The inventor and sole manufacturer of the polarizing panels even sued to force recognition of his invention by the Illuminating Engineering Society, which for decades set lighting standards according to foot-candles or the amount of light created, rather than visual acuity provided. Kahn finally won that recognition for his panels’ money- and energy-saving potential, his son said, only five years ago.

The more than 4,000 buildings around the world employing the polarizing ceiling panels include the United Nations Plaza Building in New York City and sections of the Library of Congress in Washington.

Kahn was invited to lecture about his invention in Australia, Japan, Israel, Canada and several countries in South America, South Africa and Europe.

In addition to his son of Hidden Hills, Kahn is survived by his wife, Bea of Tarzana; his daughter, Fran Rice of Tarzana; and four grandchildren.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to one of these research and treatment charities: the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the American Cancer Society or the American Heart Assn.