As
a young man, I had several jobs that no longer exist. One was a
"pin boy" at a bowling alley, and the other was a projectionist at some
local theaters. I mostly worked at the State, and Village
theaters, but did a couple of turns at the Capitol. The
projection rooms were always hot from the heat of the carbon arc lamps,
and so many projectionists worked with their shirts off. It was
also quite noisy in the projection room, which is why we projected
through a glass window so that you couldnt hear it. About every
20 minutes we had to change film, so there was no sleeping on the job.
My guess is that these projectors are late 30s-40s models.
The nice folks at the Capitol Theater allowed me to photograph these wonderful old Peerless
carbon arc projectors. These are what I operated at a few
different theaters. They were taller than a man and built like
Tanks. I had not seen one of these in over 43 years. It was
like an 90 year old man reminiscing about a Model T Ford.
Most
of the size of the machine was used for the burning of the carbon rods.
This type of light was the most beautiful and bright light that
brought the movies to life. Todays electric bulbs dont hold a
candle ( in my humble opinion) to the carbon arcs. See that
little window? That' has glass just like a welders helmet to keep the
light from burning your eyes because in a way, this was little
different than welding. These operated on high DC current like welders too. On
the front are the reels, the film head, and the sound head. Three
different companies were usually involved in making these projectors.
Here
we see the inside where the light lived. There are two carbon
rods touching each other here: One coming from the back through the
reflector, and the front rod to the right. These were on a
transport that kept them close together as they burned away.
However, to start the light, you had to touch the rods together
and quickly back off just a hair to allow for a gap in order for the
the spark to jump. Once the light was established, you simply let
it do it's thing. Needless to say, these produced a LOT of heat!
The film gate transport. These is where the lens attached. The sound gate was right under this. The sound gate was added later in projectors so that silent moves could be converted to sound without buying all new expensive projectors. Sound gates were made by different companies.
The relatively massive motor that operated the entire thing.
The
Capitol Theater today mostly uses Blu-Ray disks run through a modern
electronic projector to show movies, although at times they'll use the
old projectors.
Here's a good video showing you how these worked. Move the time slide to 1:20 to start the important part.
