Vintage Lighting Holy old lighting equipment, Batman!

Man, I hate it when things are called "old" or "Antique" and I remember when they first came out!

Actually, on the lenses, they are pretty much all molded. The edges are often ground, but to actually "grind" an 8 inch lens would cost over $1000. They do a heck of a job these days on casting them! Even many video lenses these days are cast.
Snce the thread got revived, I completely understand what you are saying. I just had a conversation with a band director that needs advice on his musical next year. He was saying they a somewhat old board but really old lights. The board is an Expression. The rest I agree they are junk, I helped open the theatre in 1975 and it was all EC gear. They still have all EC lekos and fresnels. They will be upgrading to ETC S4s and LEDs.
 
Re-Re refreshing this post...

Major by this point was putting a sticker on their reflectors and possibly had their label on the step lenses much less on the fixture. In other words, on this fixture if by the 60's, they should have markings of some sort. Major is an interesting black hole of a company in general that does still exist in concept, and was very locally important. Yes Major still exists by the way. Not much but they do.

Interesting and could be but short of research that's difficult to do. Anyone out there with that say 1968 Major era catalogue in posting would really be golden for all of us should one find it. Has to be one out there.

Beyond the fixtures, it's probably the catalogue overall that is more useful and often cheaper to get in also being more useful overall. Just missed out on a Century RSC based Fresnel from the 1964 era on E-Bay. Never knew they made such a thing. Way out of budget and month long backlog for stuff to work on already. Unfortunate in price - even if cheap but it did find a home I think. Still though absent of it's catalogue available... such a fixture didn't exist for me. Beyond the missing link of fixture, that catalogue noting it is also absent and would be better to present.


Holy old lighting equipment... should see the Major strip lights from about 1928 that I'm currently working on. Holy crap in replacing internal parts to medium screw socket parts after them melting down. Should be easy enough but I guess that socket style is no longer made thus I have to reproduce them.... due on Sunday morning and like a week's worth of work to do yet to the strips. Hate strip lights.
 
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Speaking of lighting companies of the past, don't forget:
Hub Electric
Davis which became Electro Controls, bought by Century bought by Strand, bought by Phillips......
JR Clancy produced lighting equipment in the late gaslight - early electric period
LMI
Ward Leonard
Little Lites
and many others, someone else lend a hand here, name the ones I forgot or missed.
 
Here are a couple of pics I snapped with my cell phone today (sorry about the quality,) you can see the same instruments we saw at the top of the thread plus some horrible pics of a few other hub electric goodies.
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Heres the album...
https://picasaweb.google.com/107836075346057362997/HubElectricWPHS?feat=directlink

So heres something I'd like identified. I have nine of them in varying states of neglect.
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The only markings apart from the union made sticker say "LE Co." They're made completely out of aluminum castings and some very cleverly engineered aluminum extrusions. The only steel in them are the bolts holding them together and the yoke. They have a G9.5 lamp base and seem pretty heavy duty so I was thinking of using 1KW lamps in them(FEL?? Any Recommendations?) Something interesting is that two of them have step lenses and the rest have a regular plano convex lens. Make sure you check out the whole album as I was snapping pics while tearing one down to clean it up...
https://picasaweb.google.com/107836075346057362997/LECo?feat=directlink
 
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Probably Major in single hole for wiring post Grand Stage. Different design says early 70's at least. Interesting the G-9.5 socket... shouldn't have one, or perhaps that was a re-design from the latter 70's in holding onto radial. Extra holes and rings from a different socket in the mounting plate that says there was a different socket installed? Or is this the origional type of socket installed? That would probably put it into the later 70's and really interesting. (Got any extras off line chatted about? Peek my interest given I don't have any.)

Sadly Clyde Foster one of them that visited the Grand Stage factory passed away recently. Some in the Chicago Theater scene tried to contact me about it but didn't have my current info. Clyde as more than just one of my mentours in the industry will hopefully live on forever in it's history he helped save and preserve. I remember these pokadot rainbow gels he wouldn't let me throw out amongst lots of time with him. Guess he passed before we got to writing his book I actively was attempting to help him in doing but got busy otherwise. We fell out of touch and that's a shame in that he also never got that tour of where I work that I had to cancel the visit to.

Old lights are like old people, once them that made or used them, that history is gone. Chicago Stage Lighting... fixtures are out there but their history is for the most part gone as an example. Vara-Light/Dimatronics/Hub Electric 6207 Commercial Rd. Crystal Lake, Il. 60014. (815)455-4400 still exists as a company and the person that answers the phone might just be the old timer that used to work for Major. He sent me the posted 1928 catalogue that's posted from that brand/Frank Adams - Major.

Two goals for me is both to get Clydes catalogues and re-contact this source at Vara-Light for more catalogues he might have. That and get the catalogues sent to me by Derek converted to PDF. Such info is invaluable to latter generations like me and others in identifying the gear and knowing how to use it.
 

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