Not only did Furse have a
profile that competed against the Patt 23 at one time they actually bought Patt 23 castings from
Strand and placed their own nameplate on them - you can find a picture of this in the Julius Media magazine archives.
The Furse equipment was sold as a cheaper competitor to the
Strand product to schools in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. They were made out of spun steel with a larger
lens, the hosuing was painted blue. It used the same T1
incandescent lamp in a P28
lampholder. There was a holder for a
gobo holder and you could also get an
iris. They come up on ebay from time to time. They have a more rounded shape than the patt 23 and are physically larger. We had the Furse product, the patt 23s and the earlier
strand 500W PC lanterns at school.
The great advantage of the patt23 was you could buy the 23W version which came with two identical lenses fitted that gave a light spread of 3.5m diameter at a 4.5m
throw - great for on a school
stage with no height, you could pop out the inner
lens and then you got a
fixture that had a
throw of 8.5m and then you could buy the 23N
lens tube (15 degree tube) and get a 15.5m
throw. You could also add an
iris and the rear handle and get a useful follow spot. No one else had anything remotely close to this on the market in the pre 1982 days. They were also rugged.
In the sixties and seventies other than Furse the patt 23s were displacing PC lanterns from and earlier generation made by
Strand and Major. In the UK there was no other competition. They were the S4 of their day.
The light output from the Furse product was about the same as the Patt 23 but they suffered from tilt lock mechanisims that came loose after a couple of shows. In a school this was a disaster as the typical policy was to fit and forget with no maintenance. The PC lanterns used horrible lamps with screw in basis - whose primary capability was to project an
image of the
filament onto the
stage. They also had no shutters.