Red Reflectors on Office Windows

September 18, 2006 4:44 PM

There are red reflectors stuck to the windows of the office building where I work. They're like the kind on the back of bicycles, but affixed to the inside of the windows, facing in, and are distributed so that there's only one or two per room. We're on the 26th floor, so I thought maybe they were somehow to ward off birds... but there's no reflective surface viewable from the outside. Their placement is haphazard enough that it's difficult to imagine them being used for any kind of surveying work. No one at the office seems to know why these reflectors exist. Any ideas?
posted by Jeff Howard to Technology (5 answers total)

Could they have been a promotion/swag item from previous tenants that they stuck up as some sort of office morale booster?
posted by oliver at 4:49 PM on September 18, 2006

I think they were part of a security system.
posted by paulsc at 4:56 PM on September 18, 2006

Likely they are for fire fighters to identify which windows are 'vent panels' in case of a fire. The 'vent panels' are windows that can be knocked out by a fire fighter in case of high rise fires.
posted by Argyle at 5:09 PM on September 18, 2006

Arglye is right. I've seen a ton of those in Japan.
posted by matkline at 5:31 PM on September 18, 2006

Thanks Argyle. We had never considered that, but it makes perfect sense. Now we can stop obsessing about it.
posted by Jeff Howard at 5:42 PM on September 18, 2006