Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1966 - 20

Crosspatch or Inflexible Flexibility in Lighting
Frederick Bentham, Strand Electric
(Mr. Bentham is also editor of TABS magazine)

I.R. Code (Lighting/Control)

When I read the first issue of this journal and in particular David Thayer's article on lighting control I thought I
too would like to write something but could not think of
anything which particularly concerned North America and
which I could not just as well ventilate in the pages of
Tabs. However, having just returned from another short
visit there I am reminded that I have indeed got a subject
and in fact always have had a subject. What is more it is
one that stimulates the passion of the reformer and the
curiosity of the tourist in me at one and the same time.
Americans, being great tourists, will well know the feeling
that comes over one even on a short visit to a strange
country. "Why do they do it that way?" one says, as the
peasant tills the sod with a primitive bit of bent twig.
Then too there are those women clustered perilously at
the water's edge banging their laundry on stones in some
mystic rite which means "washing day" to them. It is not
necessary to live with these people to know that all is
not well with their washing methods even though they
themselves do not realize it. This being so, on the
strength of only three visits during the last eight years I
propose to draw attention to a great American weakness
that I have observed but that you all take for granted.
While we in Britain do not install enough bathrooms and
showers in our hotels, you for your part in America do
not install enough dimmers in your theatres.
It is a mania with you to Iimit and ration them to an extent which is positively sadistic. If dimmers are not outnumbered by circuits in the ratio of at least five to one
then a guilt complex of having undermined the budget is
induced. Mind you, so long as the dimmers are so outnumbered as to make them useless, then any imaginative
extravagance one can think of at the control console
seems to be completely OK. I can cite a number of instances of the most splendiferous essays in console design which, whether they are any good or not, are in any
case negated by some vast patch panel, requiring hours of
thought before one can even begin the penance of patching itself, never mind the practice of lighting. I suppose
you are used to it. Trolling a gay stave or two from
Loewe or Schonberg, according to taste, six circuits
terminating in heaven knows how many ellipsoidals are
ruthlessly teamed together on one common dimmer in
much the same way that Britain was ordered to join the
Common Market in order to make Europe tidy. So one by
one these great choruses of Iight are entwined until all
of the small dimmers, the 6kWs, are used up. Now for
the big boys, the 12 kWs; what are we going to plug into
them) This could be difficult but wisely the specification
insisted that every circuit must be able to be patched to
any dimmer. In consequence it is only a matter of gathering up the odds and ends - the left-overs - and shoving
them into the jaws of these voracious giants and then
everything can be lit up.

Seated at the console with all twenty dimmers spread
under our fingers, and a filing cabinet of plattens or ten
presets or some other device at our elbow ready to store
the intricacies of our lighting, we are indeed in the seat
of power. Or are we) Is it not a pity to have all the borderlights on one dimmer. Never mind, one day the remaining ten dimmers can be added and bring the console
up to its full complement of thirty. Two hundred circuits
on thirty dimmers: luxury indeed! Meantime a De Gaulletype ellipsoidal is causing trouble. That circuit must come
off its dimmer and go somewhere else in order to pursue
its independent way; but where? As everyone knows an
underloaded controlled rectifier dimmer misbehaves and begins to make noises at the lamp, so even if we could
spare one of our great dimmers to be hogged by a mere
750-watt ellipsoidal or some other baby spot all may not
he as happy as might be.
It is easy to imagine a hotel being planned for two hundred people, i.e. 200 units, on the same system. The
specification would run as follows. "There shall be thirty
beds, twenty of which shall be "six Posters" each having
a capacity of 6 units and six of which shall be "twelve
posters" each having a capacity of 12 units. All beds
shall be of substantial construction and capable of sleeping to the same curve any load variation within their
rated capacity. Two Baby Tots shall rate as 1 unit and
one Jumbo Olivette as 2 units." Of course this specification leaves 8 units or people unaccounted for but for
them there could be some "non-beds." The hotel system
would be known as "infinitely flexible", any person or
persons being capable of being "des-patched" at any
time to any bed.
Enough of this nonsense. In plain words we are talking
about a stage lighting installation of 200 circuits at present patched to 20 dimmers, but with an ultimate capacity
at the console of thirty in all. This is no imaginary case,
for I saw this in a university theatre on my last visit and
I may add many more rather like it on this and previous
visits. It was explained to me that the United States goes
in for tight budgets: one cannot throw money around on
lots of dimmers as we do in extravagant, decadent,
spendthrift old Britain. Tight budgets and no waste: that
is what Uncle Sam believes in. Just as I was being told
this I felt and heard beneath my feet a hollow metallic
"klonk". As we were not walking on the deck of a badlyconstructed submarine at the time, but merely traversing
the orchestra of the theatre, I was, to say the least,
taken aback. Further low klonkings followed with each
step; there was no doubt of it we were walking not on
wood or concrete but on an outsize tin coffin. The explanation lay in the fact that this was another of those
Adaptable Theatres which at the behest of a push-button
springs into automated life. So that was where the money
had gone; on power·operated machinery not to assist

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1966