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02.08
"They say the neon
lights are bright..."
By Michael Geselowitz,
IEEE History Center
The word that the Broadway
stagehands strike by Local One of the
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees had been resolved in time for the late
December holiday season was great news for
theatergoers (the show must go on!). Among other
exciting plays, readers of Today’s Engineer
will now be able to see “The Farnsworth
Invention.” Written by award-winning playwright
Aaron Sorkin and starring well-know actors Hank
Azaria and Jimmi Simpson, this new play tells—in
fictionalized form—the story of Philo T.
Farnsworth and David Sarnoff and their battles
over the early development of television.
While it is exciting to see
electrical engineering brought to the stage,
because of the controversial nature of the
history—and the difficulty of art capturing
“truth”—this column will not be a review of the
play. The production is receiving good press,
and the reader is urged to see it for him- or
herself. However, this is an opportunity to
point out the importance of electrical
engineering not just to theater content, but to
theater infrastructure as well.
Even before the current age of
smoke machines, strobe lights and other
high-tech special effects, live theater had a
challenge…if it was held indoors away from the
elements, how could it be lit in such a way that
the action would appear somehow “natural”, and
yet could be seen by an audience who were not at
the natural distances and angles from the actors
they would have been if they were part of the
action in real life.
As early as 1585, the Teatro
Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy, was lit by candles.
Candles in theaters were eventually replaced by
oil lamps and then by gas lights. None of these
technologies, however, were sufficient to
produce “specific illumination” that provides a
sharp, highly controlled shaft of light. These
shafts are used to highlight a small area of the
stage or create the illusion of moonlight or
sunlight. The problem was solved in 1816 with
the invention of the limelight by Thomas
Drummond, but the chemical nature of the lamp
still led to problems with safety and comfort.
In 1807, Sir Humphrey Davy had
demonstrated the carbon arc lamp, but its
utility was limited by the available power
sources (batteries made of voltaic cells). By
the 1890s, the development of generator-powered
carbon arc lamps by Charles Brush and others led
to the carbon arc lamp beginning to replace
limelight in theaters. By the 1920s, the
incandescent lamp of Thomas Edison was able to
achieve 1000-watt status, and that new
technology began to replace arc lamps, while
limelight disappeared altogether (although the
term lives on!).
Meanwhile, in 1904, incandescent
technology had allowed Louis Hartmann to build
the first followspot, or spotlight (another term
that entered the vernacular)—powerful stage
light concentrated by a lens which can be
controlled by a human operator to "follow"
actors around the stage. It was first used in
the Broadway production of “The Music Teacher”
by the pioneering Broadway
writer-director-producer David Belasco. A number
of advances based on lens technology followed,
most notably those by the Kliegl brothers
(inventors of the eponymous klieg light, used in
cinema and at rock concerts).
The flexibility provided by
electric lighting to both general and specific
illumination has enabled the modern theatrical
experience, from the barest one-person play to a
Disney extravaganza. There may be no business
like show business, but there is no profession
that enhances quality of life like the
electrical engineering profession!
Michael Geselowitz is staff
director at the IEEE History Center at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, N.J. Visit
the IEEE History Center's Web page at:
www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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