Control Board at the Chicago Civic Opera House

"Part of the system devised by engineers of the General Electric Company and installed in 1929 in the new temple of music. The sketch shoes the chief electrician's control board governing lights throughout the house, including 14 circuits for the stage alone. The usual switchboard has been dispensed with and the space given over the stagehands, this accomplished through the use of a "grand master" panel which the chief electrician operated from a position near the orchestra leader and prompter. This magic panel bears a small number of knobs that when turned indice other revolving parts, far distant, to turn with them and to precisely the same degree. In this way many separate units may be interlocked and governed in groups, their action all pre set. The saturated core reactor, which is an important part od this new system, has been used before in stage lighting, but not to the extent now mafe possible through the development of talking pictures in the production of which self-synchronous motors are highly essential."


reproduced from:
Theatre Lighting: A Manual of the Stage Switchboard
by Louis Hartmann
DBS Publications, Inc. New York, NY
1931






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