Vintage Lighting Triangular Stage Plug

[derekleffew]

@RonHebbard writes:

I suspect many of the oldsters are familiar with the original 2 conductor non-polarized / non grounded paddle plugs dating from the days of DC on Broadway but I doubt many have seen the ‘new fangled’, triangular cross-sectioned, versions which came later in the 1960’s to afford reliable polarization and bonding. We had a couple of installations in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and the oldest amateur group in town, dating from the late 1800’s, still has standard paddles, ∏ width paddles and a few of the triangular polarized and bonded paddles amongst their stock of older connectors useful if / when performing in local venues.

With 2P&G for comparison.

The "hypotenuse" blade looks to be twice as wide as either of the other two. Also, one of the legs is shorter. Shall we guess which is hot, neutral, and ground?

 

[RonHebbard]

Writing from the perspective of my 'alma matter' (Sp?) The Players' Guild of Hamilton, Incorporated (A local amateur group currently in their 140 th plus year); When we wired our adapters we went with hot making last thus breaking first, neutral / identified conductor on the remaining narrow contact and ground / bonding on the longest and widest contact.
Thanks @derekleffew for posting these two photos.
@ruinexplorer Michael, here are the photos I was trying to send your way.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[geoffrey hugh]

@RonHebbard writes:


View attachment 16529
With 2P&G for comparison.

View attachment 16530
The "hypotenuse" blade looks to be twice as wide as either of the other two. Also, one of the legs is shorter. Shall we guess which is hot, neutral, and ground?

such memories! i worked lots of shows on broadway using piano boards, double throws, and auxiliary boards along with these paddle plugs, toured with them too. as you know, one operator operated two piano boards plus whatever was stacked on top of them. for those who don't know, the paddle plugs were great—easily marked with paint pens or china markers—but it was the huge cable bundles that were difficult to deal with. one pipe, four bundles of eight cables each. we labeled them long, center long, center short and short. plugs were marked on both sides in two colors for SR and SL installations. often the insulation was that tarry crap—we figured the cable came from old liberty ships which the shops bought for bupkes. i could go on, but you gold card IA members remember, i'm sure. i never saw a triangular plug, though.

 

[RonHebbard]

Such memories! i worked lots of shows on broadway using piano boards, double throws, and auxiliary boards along with these paddle plugs, toured with them too. as you know, one operator operated two piano boards plus whatever was stacked on top of them. for those who don't know, the paddle plugs were great—easily marked with paint pens or china markers—but it was the huge cable bundles that were difficult to deal with. one pipe, four bundles of eight cables each. we labeled them long, center long, center short and short. plugs were marked on both sides in two colors for SR and SL installations. often the insulation was that tarry crap—we figured the cable came from old liberty ships which the shops bought for bupkes. i could go on, but you gold card IA members remember, i'm sure. I never saw a triangular plug, though.

@geoffrey hugh The triangular cross-sectioned, polarized and grounding / bonding versions first appeared in my neighborhood (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) in the mid 1960's when 28 of the female receptacles were installed in the walls and deck during an upgrade of one of our area secondary schools, the only school in our city with a sand-bag counter-weighted, hemp, fly-floor, wooden loft blocks and wooden head blocks at the time. The circular steel spiral stairway from USR, past the LX booth, past the fly / loading floor and continuing up to the wooden grid was fairly effective in keeping the school's tame cat and nightly 'mouse marauder' out of the loading floor's sand box.
With the advent of the new plugs we gained polarization and grounding / bonding but lost the advantage of 1/2 width males and the ability to fit one or two into any one female receptacle at a time.
Thanks @geoffrey hugh for the memories and thanks again @derekleffew for posting these for me.
@ruinexplorer Here's those photos I've been trying to send your way.
EDIT: Corrected a spelling error.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[ship]

Very Cool!!! Something I never knew or considered in plug type. Thanks for the post in history and to know about. Where would such a thing polarized be located in the theater? Up in followspot locations where polarity might be important or all about the stage but in certain locations for carbon arc's managed like at the proscenium upper wall wings? Floor pockets? I have a 30A stage pin installed on the carbon arc effects projector from the below theater, would that be correct or is the triangle stage plug more correct - not listed in catalogues I have viewed so far? No evidence of ever plug type found at the theater.

Dealt with the dangerous non-polarized angled wooden 30A non-polarized plug in floor pockets later in upgrading the old 1911 Athanaum Theater. I plugged in some of these types of wooden dangerous plugs early in career into dark floor pockets. The floor pockets had lamps inside them - totally burned out or not used. Flashlight connection luckily by my time not between blackout scenes. Totally upgraded all floor pockets.

Than with the other plug - (porcelain crows foot) cursed PC work light waslighting the pin rail... (I own that fixture now & the plugs/receptacles associated with it now.) This light if plugged in backward, would electrify everything about the rigging grid if plugged in backward. Try to bend a bar against part of the grid and you would get well grounded... sparks. Might be inaccurate if the porcalian crows foot was for lighting upper pin ral balconays or the index not in general polarized. At least 25 years since working there in my "golden age of wow un-safe but learning a lot".

I have the both rectangular non-polorized pre-stage plug & the 30A at a slight angle versions with the porcalian panel mount matching ready for shipping to your museum or book photo shoots. Please take them as with the various types of stage pin from like 10a thru 50a I have collected... they are in storage with me.es

Here is a technical question... granted the theater's were cooled by this time, how might a wooden base to such a plug work on un-plugging such a thing in say the late Spring retention given wood swelling so you could not un-plug? Just curious about that. Wooden plugs I even wired were fine but different - very unsafe to use but early even into the early 90's still in use.

 

[RonHebbard]

Very Cool!!! Something I never knew or considered in plug type. Thanks for the post in history and to know about. Where would such a thing polarized be located in the theater? Up in followspot locations where polarity might be important or all about the stage but in certain locations for carbon arc's managed like at the proscenium upper wall wings? Floor pockets? I have a 30A stage pin installed on the carbon arc effects projector from the below theater, would that be correct or is the triangle stage plug more correct - not listed in catalogues I have viewed so far? No evidence of ever plug type found at the theater.

Dealt with the dangerous non-polarized angled wooden 30A non-polarized plug in floor pockets later in upgrading the old 1911 Athanaum Theater. I plugged in some of these types of wooden dangerous plugs early in career into dark floor pockets. The floor pockets had lamps inside them - totally burned out or not used. Flashlight connection luckily by my time not between blackout scenes. Totally upgraded all floor pockets.

Than with the other plug - (porcelain crows foot) cursed PC work light waslighting the pin rail... (I own that fixture now & the plugs/receptacles associated with it now.) This light if plugged in backward, would electrify everything about the rigging grid if plugged in backward. Try to bend a bar against part of the grid and you would get well grounded... sparks. Might be inaccurate if the porcalian crows foot was for lighting upper pin ral balconays or the index not in general polarized. At least 25 years since working there in my "golden age of wow un-safe but learning a lot".

I have the both rectangular non-polorized pre-stage plug & the 30A at a slight angle versions with the porcalian panel mount matching ready for shipping to your museum or book photo shoots. Please take them as with the various types of stage pin from like 10a thru 50a I have collected... they are in storage with me.es

Here is a technical question... granted the theater's were cooled by this time, how might a wooden base to such a plug work on un-plugging such a thing in say the late Spring retention given wood swelling so you could not un-plug? Just curious about that. Wooden plugs I even wired were fine but different - very unsafe to use but early even into the early 90's still in use.

@ship Hi Bri; To answer your queries: I'd never met the triangular cross-sectioned polarized and bonding connectors before or since. The theatre within a secondary school in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada received a major upgrade in the mid 1960's; The horizontal row of 6Kw resistance dimmers which I gather were from before my time were not enclosed as we commonly saw in touring piano boards of the day but instead were enclosed in an extremely well ventilated and welded steel / open framed / enclosure and secured to a wall within a new lighting booth added approximately 20' above deck level within the off stage right side wall. In the extreme USR corner, a more or less free standing narrow iron spiral stairway wound its way from deck level past the new lighting booth at approximately 20' then continued up to the hemp rail and loading floor (Sand box for your sand-bags don'tcha know) then on up through the wooden grid culminating at approximately 40' above deck level and ending perhaps 4" above the upper surface of the wooden grid. From that elevation you had approximately 30" of headroom to crawl / 'duck-waddle' your way to relocate and secure approximately 20 four sheave wooden head blocks and 80 single line wooden loft blocks. Running US / DS above approximately SRC there was an asbestos wrapped steam pipe which was a roughly 12" ID cast iron pipe surrounded with its asbestos wrap for perhaps a total OD of approximately 18" leaving a gap of roughly 12" between the top of the wrap and the finished ceiling overhead for hunched up folks such as myself to try to clamber over to locate and secure loft blocks on the remainder (largest portion) of the grid.
Let's get back down to the lighting booth, the dimmers, the hard-patch and end back down at deck level with a list of locations of the grounded / polarized paddle plugs.
Inside the LX booth a large finished opening was cut in the SR side wall; the opening's lower horizontal edge was approximately 30" AFF (Above Finished Floor) within the booth and perhaps 4' wide with its upper horizontal edge at perhaps 60", a quite useful size for ventilation, viewing the stage, reaching out to breast flown items and leap to deck level if such was your inclination; basically this was a very convenient but somewhat hazardous unguarded opening.
Hanging horizontally from the wall as low as possible above the upper edge and centered on the width of the opening were the ten or 12 6Kw resistance dimmers, purportedly these had been at stage level and were the original performance lighting dimmers but they were now reinstalled within the new LX booth and devoted to the house lights at ceiling level, also on the underside of the balcony and with two dimmers devoted to the architect's favorite wall sconces at orchestra and balcony level. When they hard wired loads to dimmers they allowed for the possibility of lighting only orchestra level, or balcony level, or leaving all of the individual dimmers mechanically latched to the mastering shaft where the appreciably longer handle on the US end afforded sufficient mechanical advantage for a 160 pound guy to dim the house without having to hang in mid-air for too long of a ride. Fading the house-lights up took a decidedly forceful grunt.
From the perspective of looking out the opening, 90 degrees to your left on the stage side of the proscenium wall were 24 2.5 Kw auto-transformer dimmers arranged as four horizontal rows of six dimmers per row with each row having a mastering handle and one additional grand mastering handle roughly the length of a decent baseball bat.
Again, if you were looking out the opening, the parallel wall behind your back housed a 24 dimmer by approximately 60 circuit hard-patch; not one of those yet to be invented spiffy counter-weighted hard-patches with self-retracting load cables, no, an older design with 72 recessed single contact female receptacles, 3 for each of your 24 auto-transformer dimmers and another dozen of a different color, 2 for each of your 6 non-dims.
Approximately 60 recessed male single contact connectors led to your various loads with a few spares for future expansion. The single conductor hard-patch cables were of two lengths, perhaps 40 at approximately 30" and maybe another dozen at roughly four feet. A row of coat hooks were thoughtfully provided and served to store patch cords not currently in use.
Load circuits, to this day many of these locations remain 'burned in my mind' from untold hours of waddling through spaces within the house ceiling dropping down through a hole basically torn through what had been the original ceiling then 'duck-waddling' around in the gap between the old original ceiling and the newly renovated plaster ceiling hung approximately 30" below.
This was the path to the 3 FOH coves cut through the new ceiling as two openings serving as 1st FOH SR and SL, two further back serving as 2nd FOH SR and SL and a final pair roughly above the balcony rail which were wider at approximately 8' each as they contained larger ellipsoidals and served as 3rd FOH SR and SL.
Each of the two front coves had 3 circuits and three 6 by 9's loaded with 500T12's.
Each of the two mid coves had 3 circuits and three 6 x 12's loaded with 500T12's.
Each of the two rear coves had 6 circuits and six 8 by 11's loaded with 750 T12's.
The 6 circuits in the rear coves were hard-wired as adjacent pairs.
Above the pit were another eight or ten 1 Kw down lights with framing shutters and each on their own circuit.
A follow spot / projection booth within the rear wall of the balcony was equipped with two additional circuits from the hard-patch.
Supported from the grid, but hoisted by worm-geared hand-cranked winches at deck level, were two LX pipes; LX 1 DS and LX 2 MS.
Now my memories are getting sketchier: LX 1 carried ten or a dozen circuits arranged as pairs plus one bonus single circuit on the center line. LX 2 carried 8 circuits laid out as four pairs to power R40 / 150 Watt 'X-rays' fitted with four-color glass roundels originally with ridges to increase side to side spread and supplied as amber, red, blue and green with the green often removed and stored in favor of open white. This pipe also carried five additional circuits equally spaced across its width and often utilized to provide back lighting and / or specials.
O.K. @ship we're finally getting down to deck level and the polarized paddle plugs you inquired about hours ago back up at the top.
28 individually circuited porcelain polarized and bonded paddle receptacles were provided located as follows:
- 4 DSR in the stage side of the prosc'.
- 4 DSL in the stage side of the prosc'.
- 4 MSR within the floor and fitted with a durable, flush, cast iron cover.
- 4 MSL within the floor and fitted with a durable, flush, cast iron cover.
- 4 USR flush within the US wall,
- 4 USC centre flush within the US wall.
- 4 USL flush within the US wall
4 receptacles per location in 7 locations for a total of 28 circuits terminated in one triangular polarized and bonded receptacle per circuit.
Take care @ship Always my pleasure swapping historic / antique / vintage info' with you.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[JonCarter]

Never dealt with the "modern" triangular/polarized stage plugs, but all or our floor pockets in Jr. Hi and Sr. Hi auditoria were filled with stage plug receptacles.

I worked in an outdoor theatre in Cleveland for about 5 years in the '50s. Our light booth on the stage left side of the 3000 seat house had 6 banks of 6, 6kW dimmers, some autotransformer and some resistance. On the walls above the dimmer banks were panels containing the 6 switches, one for each dimmer (knife switches), fuses, a contactor to black out the whole bank and 8 50A stage plug receptacles for each dimmer circuit. At the back of the booth were magazine panels, one for the SL circuits and one for the SR, each containing a fuse & knife switch for each circuit. Out of the top of these came about 100, 10' patch cords with 50A stage plugs on the ends. When plugging up the board for a show, these would be wound around & through a bunch of strap-iron hooks bolted to the ceiling of the booth and plugged into the appropriate dimmer's receptacle. Plugging up a show was good exercise--the patch cords were 2 cond. #8 & pretty stiff. This overhead "snake pit" was about 6'-6" above the floor--no tall booth operators here.

 

[ship]

Wow! thanks for the amazing description of a lighting space and how it was used & wired! Hope not mad at me given @ship direct responsesis but if the case - what you describe is amazing and worth getting that out of you. I am awestruck in reading about it - thanks. So what year the theater and what relation lower are these plugs in question in your concept related to a carbon arc fixture? Or otherwise their purpose? Fascinated by this.

 

[derekleffew]

@JonCarter this?

I guess the stage has a roof now; too bad.

 

[JonCarter]

@derekleffew This is a photo of the Park. Yes, too bad about the roof. Looks like this photo was taken in the late '30s. The light booth was just out of the right side of this picture. After this (early '40s?) two brick proscenium splay towers were built on the house side of the orchestra pit, about 20' in front of the towers shown.. The proscenium was (is?) 84' from the SL to SR bricks (now "back bricks") towers. When I worked there we has three sets of torms which cut the width down to a more manageable 50'. Each torm had several sections parallel to the curtain line, the offstage one of which was hinged to allow large set pieces (everything on dollies) to move on & off and a 4' section facing the stage with louvers for side lights. Unfortunately, nowhere to hang back lights, tho.

@ship You're welcome, and it's good to reminisce--haven't thought much about the place in years. Cain Park was built as a WPA project in the '30s. Prior to that, this was a natural ravine with a drainage stream running through it. The first thing built was a culvert for the stream, now directly under the orchestra pit. When we had a heavy rainy season, the pit filled. I mean filled--3'-4' deep. (It's a BITCH covering flats in the rain!) There were no stage plug receptacles on the stage or other lighting positions during my time there--a major elec upgrade was done in '53 and all the wiring to the lighting positions was replaced w/30A circuits and weatherproof twistlock connectors. The three banks of 6kW autotrans dimmers were part of that upgrade; guess they ran out of money before they replaced he remaining banks of resistance. (That booth got WARM on a low-light scene.) The only stage plugs remaining were on the patch cords in the light booth. As to those at schools, my H.S, auditorium was built in 1924 and Jr. Hi in 1936--stage plug sockets all over them both.

I have some production stills from Cain Park in the '40s & '50s--If anyone's interested I'd be glad to dig them up, scan them & post them (If I can figure out how, that is.).

 

[RonHebbard]

Wow! thanks for the amazing description of a lighting space and how it was used & wired! Hope not mad at me given @ship direct responses but if the case - what you describe is amazing and worth getting that out of you. I am awestruck in reading about it - thanks. So what year the theater and what relation lower are these plugs in question in your concept related to a carbon arc fixture? Or otherwise their purpose? Fascinated by this.

@ship Hi Bri'; No, not mad at you at all. The school was Westdale Secondary, one of our older secondary schools, originally constructed (as a pure guesstimate) in the early 1900's. The school would've been enlarged and updated MANY times over the decades with the renovation I've been referring to occurring in the 1960's, possibly around 1963 - 1965 maybe. This would've been the reno' in which the polarized / bonding 3 conductor paddle receptacles were added.
To answer your queries regarding sources and fixtures;
All of the sources were incandescent with the loan exception being a BRAND NEW Strong, AC carbon, Trouperette complete with lobsterscope and the optional bolted on HEAVY glass UV filter in a separate, non-sprung, mount which bolted on the very front on the exterior of the boomerang where you manually swung it up and latched it when desired. If you were a savvy operator, you'd added your own additional counter-weight below the rear of the arc-house to help offset the shift in balance between having the HEAVY UV filter positioned lower or higher in front of the beam.
Thinking back to working in the renovated space; one of the places you'd wish to never be in case of a fire would've been focusing in the FOH, 'duck waddling' your way around in the approximately 30" gap between the underside of one of the original ceilings and the upper surfaces of the most recently installed ceiling. There was only ONE crudely hacked access / egress hole with no other path of escape.
Regardless; when the space reopened with the hemp fly and loading floor, sandbox full of dry sand and all those FOH positions we local amateur techies thought we were in heaven, close as we were going to get. When it reopened, it was the only venue amateurs were permitted to work in in our entire city. ALL the other spaces in town were originally constructed as vaudeville houses, were steadfastly crewed by IA 129 with all of them operating as 35 mm movie houses by the 50's and 60's. Fresnels were 6" predecessors of Altmans, possibly by Century housing incandescent 500T20's. The 6x9's and 6x12's in FOH were also likely Century housing 500T12's with the twelve 8xWhatevers (possibly 8x11's) in the rear (3rd) coves containing 750T12's and, occasionally 1MT12's if/when the Board of Education's purchasers would screw up occasionally ordering four 750T12's and accepting three 1MT12's as equivalent in the misguided believe that both 4 x 750 AND 3 x 1,000 totaled 3000 Watts of light either way. I'm sure you're all too well versed in the bizarre logic of some / many purchasing departments.
Thanks again @ship for the memories and the chat.
Oh! To answer your question regarding the reasoning behind these specific receptacles; I've NO idea. There were a total of 28 in the space as previously listed with none of them in the FOH including the projection / spot booth which housed the only arc source in the building. Other than the 28 locations previously listed, all other flown and FOH patch-able circuits terminated in 3 contact female 2P&G's, original black fiber connectors pre phenollic / nylon / plastic. The only exceptions I ever found were the two patch-able circuits in the projection / spot booth which were single gang / single receptacle industrial duty grounded parallel blade receptacles where you could plug in any standard household male plug, grounded, non-grounded, polarized or not.
Thanks again for the chat.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard