Hey sloop haven't seen you for awhile. Welcome back. Your
point is well-taken, but the internet has much more information on the equipment than the people, particularly the designers. We talked about
Lee (Watson) before, even some of our eldest members didn't know who he was.
And for the record, I recently bought
Theatrical Lighting Practice, Joel E. Rubin and Leland H. Watson. Theatre Arts Books, 1954. It's scant--142 pages. But most of the design philosophies are still valid, even in this day and age of LEDs, Media Servers, Moving Lights, and other technologies not even dreamed about then.
So here are some designers' surnames with which every lighting student should be familiar, in no particular order, although if gafftapegreenia or soundlight or other college student would like to put them in chronological order, and add first names, I'd give them extra credit.
Some of the below are more well-known as educators/textbook authors than as designers, but you must know before you can teach, in my opinion. Some are still designing today, and some died 400 years ago.
Mielziner
Bay
Holder
Serlio
Musser
Sabbatini
McCandless
Bel Geddes
Bellman
Emmons
Svoboda
Watson
Clark-Kelly
Hemsley
Fingerhut
Feder
Rosen-Holmes
Fuchs
Kaczorowski
Benthem
Pilbrow
Hersey
Billington
Gillette
Fisher
Rosenthal
Essig
Skelton
Cohen
Smith
(Tried to make it an even 30, sorry for any exclusions. I'm a little rusty on 1750-1900)
That's probably enough. Once first names are added and in chronological order, this will go into the
wiki, so do your best.
SteveB, STEVETERRY, sloop, others: how many of the above have you worked for/with? For me, it's 7, I think. I've heard 4 others speak, I think.
edit: What, what do mean mean "unable to connect"?? NOOOOOOooooooo.