What got you into lasers?

[swamidog]

is there any chance of getting access to or video of the old shows?

Russ was my dad's boss (my uncle worked there too early on as a EE but never ran any shows). They were located in Columbus OH. They spent the winter fixing equipment making new equipment and making shows for the next fair season. Yeah I don't doubt they had to borrow a laser. One bad bump on the roadway and something in the laser would inevitable break.

[SaltyRobot]

is there any chance of getting access to or video of the old shows?

Unfortunately for Laser Presentations the reel to reel shows went with with Russ's brother and no one has talked to him in years. Last time we talked to Russ was probably 4 years ago. They may still exist but who knows at this point

[lasermaster1977]

Thanks for filling in these priceless details! As I recall, the last time I saw the Laser Fair show at the Texas State Fair was in the 1979 season and it occurs to me what I was seeing on the dome back then, could easily have been coming from your CR 2W. Then advance the calendar to 2014 and here I am, talking to you about it. I think that is pretty amazing. At one point I thought the Laserium show I saw at the Kirkpatrick Planetarium in Oklahoma City in the summer of 1980 was the driving influence behind my lifelong quest to recapture the experience.. But now that I think of it, it was the Laser Fair shows that started it all for me. Where did Laser Fusion perform the shows, did you take it on the road? Do you still have some of the original equipment from those days? I am saddened to hear that Larry had passed away in 2006 although I did not even know his name until yesterday. As your footnote says, "Everything depends on everything else" and that is so true, given the positive influence you and others gave to me as early pioneers of the industry. Thank you all, for doing it!
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It is indeed a small world. I too saw Laserium at the old Kirkpatrick Planetarium, although I believe it was maybe '79. I know they had an extended run there. As we new the planetarium director we had VIP seats and was a much closer and up front experience compared to the Gates Planetarium show I saw in '77.

I started producing laser special effects in planetarium shows, i.e. solar system and universe educational shows with a flair. The popularity of the laser effects in a "darkened, special effects theater" of a planetarium AND the amazing star ball projectors (ours was a Spitz 512 on an elevator) was spectacular, and the proven track record of Laserium just caused my involvement to explode from there. I was the audio, electronics, techo-geek and the staff urged me to develop and HeNe laser projector. That grew into my getting a contract to perform 4 color laser shows at this planetarium.

I produced about four distinctive music style shows with laser and other special effects accompaniment, Classical, Synthesizer style, like Mike Olefield, Kraftwerk, and the rock show I titled "Laser Fusion", yeah buddy, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Kansas, Alan Parsons, Fleetwood Mac, etc. It was by far the most popular and durable. We only had shows on Fri-Sun. and "Laser Fusion" almost always sold out, for years. I then started getting requests from big business to do shows for their meetings. My first was for Texas Instruments upper management and was held in the planetarium, then it was Chrysalis Records, wanting to promote the album of a rock group from England. I gave a percentage of the proceeds to the college per my contract, but a 100 seat planetarium was limiting. The next move was to go to where the client wanted their show, hotel ballrooms, ski resorts, etc.. My laser projector installation at the planetarium wasn't exactly made for portability, so then that whole engineering paradigm exploded. Small and light is good. Eventually, the Kirkpatrick moved to a new location and the old science building on the fair grounds became the Oklahoma Arts Center. I did take Laser Fusion on the road to the OKC State Fair for several years. I rented the old planetarium from the Arts Center for several years doing shows there during and after the fair in '82-83.

In 1979, I got a gig in Houston with Weedeater, the company unveiling a brand new style of nylon string edger. They asked if I could draw an outline of their product that matched up to a slide of it projected on the screen. I was just getting my first XY D-to-A converter wire-wrap board finished along with the software for my Apple II. It was so amazing! Can you imagine? I could draw ANYTHING I wanted with just 127 co-ordinate points AND had blanking and an image speed code. The Weedeater reveal was a big success needless to say.

In the course of 5 years my computer graphics grew from THAT to an Apple IIe with dual floppies, a TimeMaster card, a RAMWork Memory expansion card and four of my XYZ co-processor image display and image buffer boards. Each board had enough SDRAM for 32K which was enough for the DAC software driver, 16 Lissajou Shape routines, 16 Scaling routinges and 22 images and an external automated/manual control console. New images could be uploaded on the fly from floppy disk or Apple memory filing image buffers after they displayed (for long animations). The TimeMaster card allowed for accurate sync to a timebase giving accurate and consistent playback to CD soundtrack accompaniment. Back then we always thought in terms of RYGB for colors because the ion gas lasers were expensive and you used every high power beam you bought to good purpose. But I had four XYZ projector outputs and images could really be complex and layered with colors. Later we did the dichroic thing and combined beams when the gig called for it, but I preferred having four imaging guns. We used A/O's for high speed blanking. An optical alignment pain in the ass, but they were well worth it.

Pangolin came about near the time I had to leave the all this fun, get a real job and raise a family, but I was born to be a laserist.

Yes, I still have a lot of my equipment, about 4 GS-115 open-loop scanners, a pair of GS-100PD scanners, all w/drivers, none of the ion lasers, except for my Spectra Physics Model 155 HeNe that still puts out about 1mW and of course my Apple IIe automated computer graphics system and console. And lots of other stuff. My Apple or other Apple systems fellow laserists used of my design never failed. (I was very anti-IBM PC back then. Don't ask why or I will tell you).

So now I crave some LDs.

[lasermaster1977]

Russ was my dad's boss (my uncle worked there too early on as a EE but never ran any shows). They were located in Columbus OH. They spent the winter fixing equipment making new equipment and making shows for the next fair season. Yeah I don't doubt they had to borrow a laser. One bad bump on the roadway and something in the laser would inevitable break.

I was looking through some of my old files and I find Russ's business card and a few other notes of when I talked to him. I mostly remember he and Larry Wisdom did the same inflatable dome thing. It is really cool your dad worked for him. He's gotta have some great stories.

Talking of bad bumps, I once lost two Spectra 164 Argon tubes in a dual laser projector case when the case was mistakenly put on an 18 wheeler that did not have air-ride shocks. This was discovered 2 days before the show as we unpacked the gear prior to setting it up for the first Commodore's Tour gig. We were lucky Spectra HAD and air expressed us two tubes in time for the show. That was an expensive lesson.

[SpitzSTP]

is there any chance of getting access to or video of the old shows?

I second that emotion! Also, pictures of people, pictures of equipment, scanned business cards (I really like seeing the Laser Fair Card!!! ) Just about anything, to document the early days. Including the stories... and the people. Before the opportunity to even ask, disappears.

[stanwax]

I like Carl B saw Blackpool illuminations with lasers and I think thats what did it for me. I think I first saw them towards the end of the '70's but clearly remember watching the faint beams flick about the sky above my home outside of Liverpool some 40 miles away during the mid to late 80's.
I remember seeing spiro patterns in bright blue/green (argon stylee) projected onto the buildings at the base of Blackpool tower. I was just fascinated by this stange, beautiful sparkly light.
around the same time I saw a hologram at the Pilkingtons glass museum in nearby St Helens and peering into that dark box and seeing a bird of prey lit in red with the strange speckly light, was just magical. At the same exhibition I remember nearly wetting myself when i saw the liquid crystal 7 segement display operating. (kids today dont know they are born!!!)
Earlier tonight I tried to simulate my own Blackpool experience by firing an argon laser out of my garage.



Rob

[Carl B]

You got the lexel working again. You just need to point it in the direction of Lancashire now Rob.

[lasermaster1977]

I recall in 79 or 80, there was a university professor who hooked up brain waves from sleeping volunteers to four GS XY galvos (RYGB), each color representing different brain activity. They toured science museums with this "kiosk" type presentation using local sleep volunteers. The sleepers where in the large kiosk isolation room and the laser projections went from the top of the kiosk to the sides of the darkened room. It was called something like Brainscape.

Wow, I can't believe I still had the brochures and program handout for this. The name of this was actually "Dreamscape". Paul Earls if M.I.T. was responsible for designing the laser projections, music and Dark Space design. This ran in Dallas from Nov 15, 1980 - Feb 1, 1981. I'll scan and post it if there is any interest. He appears to still be around.

[SpitzSTP]

Wow, I can't believe I still had the brochures and program handout for this. The name of this was actually "Dreamscape". Paul Earls if M.I.T. was responsible for designing the laser projections, music and Dark Space design. This ran in Dallas from Nov 15, 1980 - Feb 1, 1981. I'll scan and post it if there is any interest. He appears to still be around.

There is great interest! Many thanks lasermaster77 for sharing this! Please do scan and post, I'd love to see it.

[tribble]

I can tell you that if you google image search for "dreamscape," a lot of weird stuff shows up, but none of it relates to what we're talking about!!