High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Walter D`Arcy Ryan (Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada, April 17, 1870 – Schenectady, New York, USA, March 14, 1934) was an influential early lighting engineer who worked for General Electric as director of its Illuminating Engineering Laboratory. He pioneered skyscraper illumination, designed the Scintillator colored searchlights display, and was responsible for the lighting of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, in addition to the first complete illumination of Niagara Falls.