i've seen some real oldies (my middle school's theater was built in the 1920's and some of the instruments are still surviving and functional) if you want to know more just google for books about the history of lighting, they are out there. don't expect to find much on concert lighting however, it's not a very well documented field.
A few books that doccument such old fixtures, I can provide a list of books to search for. Nothing modern however ... no real good Dover type books on early
stage lighting, much less
stage lighting history at the moment that I remember. Perhaps one that I forget and would have to search for. Best concept is eyes and ears open and not passing up the chance even for a duplicate
book you have if earlier edition. Amazing the difference even in "A Method of Lighting the
Stage" between the 1949 version and 1972 version. The 1949 version has the classic versions box light and some plano
convex lights, the 1972 has the radial Lekos replacing them. Just got my 1929 version of Fuchs in from Amazon.... gonna be a good read.
Ditto with me on these types of
carbon arc spot and often
incandescent lamped rectangular box lights to old theaters of the 1920's experienced, plus long and heavy strip lights, index and
foot lights left over from the origional days when the theater was built. For the most part I did my best to preserve them but didn't have much time available to
play test them.
This one PC
fixture without it's
lens I enherited as the fly
rail light.... to which I quickly replaced. Seems it's
outlet was a un-grounded non-polorized
twist lock plug, and there was a short from the
neutral to
ground in the
fixture.
Plug it in correct, it works just fine I was advised.
Plug it in backwards and it electrified the
grid, much less if you touched a pipe to the
rail, it would do great sparks I found out. By way of inheriting stuff like that, seems over the say last 30 years of use in the life in this
fixture, nobody before me ever considered re-wiring the
fixture and changing the
outlet... For them, it was more a question of if it's doing sparks, just reverse how it's plugged in. Amazing -
fixture was toast by way of wiring and rust. Possibly the only old
fixture I ever threw out.
Oldest
fixture... perhaps in my case something I saw way up in the ceiling arch of the same theater. It was a home made tin candle holder still hanging off a plaster support bar as used during the construction of the theater. One wouldn't think such a 1920's construction would be using candles yet there it was in a dark area of the ceiling arch. I left it there and would hope future people climbing the arch would also for other generations to find.
Designed a few shows with 4.1/2" PC fixtures, it's interesting and at times depends upon the
fixture a lot... I also own some older lights from mostly about the 1960's including my Kliegl Dyna Beam. Still has an origional 3,000
Watt incandescent lamp that works, and origional gell in the
boomerang.
Over the weekend I was servicing fifteen 1960's Fresnels in bringing them up to 65Q standards... next up on the list, like twenty
Altman 101' Plano-Convex fixtures from about the same period of time.
Old fixtures are always interesting for me. You can learn a lot from them be it the taped solder
line splices in a
cyc to the sheet metal work in how it was done.