history of consoles

[GregB]

Any one know:

what was the first programmable/memory lighting desk?

where it was made?

who buy?

I understand this will be pre DMX512

but who made the first DMX console, I dont know that either!

Big one I know but I need all the leads I can get at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

G.

[sguy42]

Strand did a lot of early work in the sixties, as did Thorn.

 

Try reading 60 Years of Light Work by Frederick Bentham, that'll certainly cover some of it.

 

Shane

[Brian]

what was the first programmable/memory lighting desk?

where it was made?

who buy?

The Datalux, first made in the US around 1958/9 used punched cards.

[Ian H]

what was the first programmable/memory lighting desk?

where it was made?

who buy?

The Datalux, first made in the US around 1958/9 used punched cards.

 

When I first worked a desk 30 + years ago it was Strand MMS --- NYT at Shaw Theater and Thorn Q-file 2000 --

Talk of the Town W1.

 

Any body else used the Thorn LAO dimmers, 2 2.5k dimmers on a Slide in module..

 

Ian H

[GregB]

Thanks gents; not, "The world's first memory lighting control, the IDM/DL...(1967)". Strand archive??

 

Thanks IanH, just found reference to the QFile, must have been early 60's??

[boatman]

I don't think the Thorn Q-file existed until the mid-60s. The first TV studio in the UK to be fitted with Q-file was Studio 8 at Television Centre, which opened in 1967. Several other studios at Television Centre and Lime Grove were fitted with Q-file between 1969 & 1973. It was also widely used in BBC regional studios and many ITV studios.

[delicolor]

I don't think the Thorn Q-file existed until the mid-60s. The first TV studio in the UK to be fitted with Q-file was Studio 8 at Television Centre, which opened in 1967. Several other studios at Television Centre and Lime Grove were fitted with Q-file between 1969 & 1973. It was also widely used in BBC regional studios and many ITV studios.

Fred Bentham describes the Q-File as being an immediate success from when it was launched in 1965. (Source- Cue, but I've put it away again now so can't reference it).

[oilyspark]

Well it all depends on what you mean by 'programmable/memory'. If you include in that description a desk with presettable move cues (rather than actual levels being programmable) then the S'Carlos Lisbon Opera House Light Console of 1940 would count, as like all the Light Consoles it had combination pistons. I would call it programmable, in the sense that you can recall a memory by number and run the cue with a 'go' button. Lisbon was the first one sold although the prototype was working in 1935. I am not sure which Light Console was the first to have the capture system for its pistons (as opposed to the setterboard) although Nick Hunt or Jim Laws will have the answer.

 

Lucien

[GregB]

Thanks Lucien, I was thinking more along the line of electronic memory and data transport rather then cards with wholes punched, wheels and pullys, but the nostalgia is all good!

I can remember as a lad pulling wooden levers with bits of string on a catwalk above the stage to dim lighting... ooer those where the days of real lighting control!

[Ian H]

Thanks Lucien, I was thinking more along the line of electronic memory and data transport rather then cards with wholes punched, wheels and pullys, but the nostalgia is all good!

I can remember as a lad pulling wooden levers with bits of string on a catwalk above the stage to dim lighting... ooer those where the days of real lighting control!

 

Must sit down and write the story of the Qfile at the Talk of the town and the Water cooling tower but not after drinking a rather nice Red......