| Not quite the same as an arc lamp, but in high school I did theater tech stuff for the middle school. One year the only thing the lighting rental company had for a follow spot was an HID-based unit. It was significantly larger, heavier, and beefier than the tin-can Strong Trooperettes we had. Designed for large theaters. It came with a huge transformer pack because it needed 220/240 power, and we were plebs with single-phase 120V. It had an hour-meter for lamp time. It had a start button. Not only did it have a start button, it had startup procedures. First the fan, then power, then start. It had cool-down procedures, too. The fan was not some cheesy shaded-poll bullshit out of an overhead transparency projector like on our Trooperettes. No, sir. A squirrel-cage blower, the kind with serious ball bearings and lots of momentum that took several seconds to spool up, with a noise that sounded like you were turning on something in a nuclear power plant. It made a "whooMMMMM" noise when you pushed the start button from an inrush of angry pixies. It was the coolest goddamn thing a bunch of young theater nerds had ever seen. |
Except that he's afraid of the arc lamp drivers in his products. Coke can-sized kilovolt capacitors are nothing to mess around with, even if you are nearly fearless....