Just in case you are wondering…
…what a Delicolor is, it is a vintage stage lighting control.
It was designed by Rollo Gillespie Williams who moved from Holophane to Furse in the 1940s.
The Delicolor bits are to the left and bottom (and right on the uncropped picture if you click through). You turned the dial to the desired colour, wound the handles… and Voila!
Learn something new everyday…
When did it become obsolete?
Comment by Crushed by Ingsoc — April 1, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
CBI, it became obsolete in 1995- when no-one at Furse knew how to fix it any more (all of the old guys had retired!)
In reality, it was a dinosour and was seriously old-fashioned by the late Fifties.
Comment by Delicolor — April 1, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
Interesting. Much as the Selltape factory still had an old fashioned switchboard with operators connecting wires and stuff pre=war style. Purely for novelty value. Not sure if they still do.
Comment by Crushed by Ingsoc — April 1, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
When I was at the University of Stirling in the 1980s, the University switchboard was still antiquated, with cords being manually connected by a small army of ladies. It was odd, because the University was not that old. When I went back a few years later, they had a modern PABX. It was just not the same.
Comment by Colin Campbell — April 5, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
Colin, I can remember going to a conference at Stirling University in the early seventies and being impressed with the MacRobert Theatre which was well equipped technically.
The low-rise nature of the site and the stunning setting tends to play down how much concrete there is!
Post Office Telephones were very suspicious of modern technology, having got scorched by their failed adoptions of electronics in the 50s and 60s so there was a tendency towards more reliable electro-mechanical solutions. Also, as phone systems then had a 20 year design life, the need to replace the University system would not have been pressing in the 80s, other than by saving on labour costs.
Comment by Delicolor — April 7, 2007 @ 12:58 pm