One of the few plus of youtube.

I was fortunate enough to have been able to get a tour in a couple different theaters way back in the day as a kid... It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen... The realization that all of the light on the screen came from this little arc, and how it all comes together seamlessly when the projectionist knows what they're doing... I remember thinking it must take a team to operate all that (I knew the basics before ever getting a tour of the booth but of course no details yet)... I was boggled by the idea that normally it was just a single person up there doing everything. Decades later I run across this and get to see what the filled in details look like, as nothing was operating during the tours... Just the explanations.

@fbw71u A marquee is the awning or canopy in front of the theatre where they advertised the movie(s) playing inside with large movable letters and the name of the theatre.

❤

Go watch "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston. Report back.

Right on, man!

Or "the Blob" 1958

That's fantastic! Have you been able to get work at a theater running film?

@@thomasnegovanonline - unfortunately no- there are no theaters in my area still running film. And since my original post 7 years ago, I sold all of the projection equipment that I had in storage. When the covid restrictions hit in March of last year I could no longer afford to pay the fee's on my multiple storages. My wife and I both work in healthcare so we still worked during the restrictions, however because they were performing only emergency procedures and quit all outpatient procedures, our hours were cut dramatically for a long while. Without that disposable income I fell about 4 months behind on the storage fee's. I had to sell the stuff just to pay the fee's on my multiple storages and keep my belongings from being auctioned, as I couldn't afford to maintain our household expenses, mortgage, car payments etc, and pay the storage fees as well. I made some profit after paying the fee's off, but was sad to lose some of the items I had obviously. But it is what it is- I am not complaining some people lost way more... we had a roof, cars to drive and food to eat... so all in all we made it through quite well.

Wish modern everything would take a venture back to those days. Things were built like tanks. Because they didn't want them to fail. Now things are built to fail, so they make more money in replacement costs. Really sad to see this era go. Got a few things around here that are 50+ years old and while they occasionally have "personality", they run just as hard and like to be put away as wet as the day they came out of the factory. Check back in 50 years with *anything* that's made today... You'll need heavy equipment to do so... It'll be found at the bottom of a landfill in China. At least it's going back where it came from 🤣

Long Islander here. Yes, the 70s was the decade where I could check the Newsday movie section every weekend and find at least one theater in Nassau or Suffolk showing a double feature of many of my favorites-AND on a single wide aspect screen. Even more delightful was that these places were almost never overpopulated, so you'd hear more of the room's reverb. Plus, less people is always nicer. I miss those days a whole lot.

Not xenon, right?

Brian Zachel Perhaps National / Union Carbide (UCAR)?

The digital projectors first generation had a brightness issue. Not anymore. They’ve come a long way.

I can only think of the Music Box. The Biograph is ruined inside now. And vacant. Aragon was a ballroom, you can see remnants but it's not as gorgeous as it used to be.

@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 there were tons of nice old movie theaters back in the day. The Avalon, Nortwon, Pickwick (Park Ridge), Palacio (formerly Sheraton, saw Dead Kennedys there), Uptown (saw Peter Gabriel there) and several more that have slipped from my memory. Some were a little run down in the '70s, but were lavish inside. I saw U2 on their first US tour at the Aragon, and "The Shining" at the Three Penny next to the Biograph. Good times.

I was navy and went to a 2 week 35 motion Projector operators school in 1962 in Norfolk, Va. Where I was stationed the base theater had 35 mm projectors that came off the battleship Missouri and of course had carbon arcs. In 1965 I was sent to Hawaii and worked as a projectionist, ticket sales and asst. manager. I do remember hand cranking the film for inspection and spliceing when necessary. Films came tails out and had to be rewound and inspected so would be come heads out so we could show them on the film. Always arrived early to check the incoming film, clean and do maintenance on the lamp housing and the projector. When things were slow on weekends I would clean the booth. If you looked at the projection booth of the era you would see the openings with steel shutters above them with a fusible link that would melt if a fire occured. The walls of one both I worked in had sheet metal over all the walls. All this extra fire-proofing were left-overs from the earlier times when films were nitros-celluloid and vary flamible. Best part time job I ever had.

I noticed them.

Yes, and like the old steam locos, they had lots of un-labled controls. You just had to know what they all did.

I saw lots of unlabeled stuff after a horrible accident on a water raft ride. They implied the PUBLIC should know what the unmarked red button is. Emergency shutoff. Not marked.

Awesome projectors had the pleasure of seeing two of those working back in 1983

Heh 6-7kW, even with the exhaust... There's a *lot* of heat there haha... And of course for brief periods, both on, 12kW+... Gotta be like standing next to the sun... High up in the building to boot... That said, I wanted to be a projectionist when I was a kid... Never got into the field but did get a couple tours before they quit doing that kind of thing... The heat was one of the things I remember, and the projectors weren't even on during the walk thru! 🤣

@@MadScientist267 Hi. It was just something I did while at college. It was a good thing. I enjoyed it.

@@MartysWhiteSuit I can imagine. I chase these types of jobs... Curiosity is what gets me pointed toward them... Been in some hella conditions at times to satisfy my desires for deeper understanding or just otherwise wanting to see something hehe I also wanted to do it because of the "all eyes on the invisible man" idea... Something about knowing a large group of people are dependent on someone they can't "see" to make the whole experience flow as it should... Can't really describe the idea very well lol I'm sure it's satisfying to successfully get the reels all lined up right for a good show

@@MadScientist267 Oh yes, I think I see what you mean. I was helping two blokes at first. One left and the other, also a student, got expelled from the college for trying to get a girl into his room. I was on my own for the rest of the time. I set up the reels, sometimes adding leaders, running the film, 5 or 6 reels, then rewinding the reels for next day collection. I'd finish at 10.30. Too late to do anything else. I think it was the best job I had really. I went on after that to run a drinks warehouse. Good job, but I liked being a projectionist. The rush of excitement during the 6-second change-over.

I remember the Avalon had the last Cinemascope screen in Milwaukee.

Did the number of screenings there slow down? I used to go to this theater all the time for silent films when I lived in Chicago!

@@thomasnegovanonline Were they in DOLBY?

@@thomasnegovanonline it's probably been shot up

Xenon arc bulbs. Yeah I had those in my cinema. We ran on Westrex vertical reel to reel systems that you had to rewind. Never got the chance to run a platter/loop machine.

OMG! I used to go and sit in a friend's cinema and love that carbon arc machine. This cinema, Aelo, was also demolished a few years for a parking lot as well!!! What is happening? The matrix has broken again.

@@DBuilder1977 It's 'progress'. I wouldn't mind so much as some technology is better, but in most cases the 'improvement' is just a cheap shit half assed attempt.

Must be quite a few of these still India or not. Would love to visit one when in India next time. Any clue where to look for them?

Haha I don't know what it is about movie theaters and their projection booths, but they were incredibly enigmatic from the perspective of the seat in the theater... Despite being fundamentally simple... We had all seen film projectors in school but they of course were "toys" compared to these... And I dunno about everyone else, but until I got a tour of a booth, I was absolutely *burning* to know the differences hahaha

Thanks for this explanation. I was wondering if he was switching between different short films or of this was supposed to be one continuous movie. I do remember actually seeing a yellow dot appear on the screen occasionally watching the Chronicles of Narnia back in ‘05 at a theater that was still using its original film projectors (sadly closed down for good a few months ago), but figured it was just some odd artifact on the strip… (that’s a memory that had been buried away until now 😂)

@@X5Industries Indeed, majority of people never thought anything of it. So much noise and artifacts in film, it was "just another one". That was the beauty of it... Secret code right in plain sight. Would have been very obvious it was some kind of signal if it was the only artifact to ever appear on the screen 🤣

Yep. Pedal that "drops the clutch"... Opens the douser, engages transport, etc... He didn't yell "Roll film" but hey 🤣

As a retired I.A.T.S.E. 306 projectionist I am surprised that the silver jaws for the carbon rods were not cleaned nor polished. My grandfather hand cranked projectors in Chicago befor moving to NYC He was a projectionist at the DeMille and then the Cinema One.

Are the xenon dangerous to the eyes?

13.6 mm. At the current consumed, the traditional copper coating would have melted in the beam, so the current was supplied to the water cooled solid silver jaw unit, just ahead of the flame. This was the reason that the carbon rotated, to maintain electrical contact without pitting the jaw. Despite that, it took about 20 minutes every day on each lamp to polish the pit marks out of the jaws.

@@wilsjane Wonder why they didn't use tungsten for the holder.

@@kleetus92 The jaw was conducting around 180 amps to the electrode at between 30 and 40 volts DC. In early installations the current was regulated by series ballast resistors from the output of a thermionic (mercury) diode, while in later installations the multi tap coupling transformers and solid state diodes stabilised the current and prevented surges. The strike current was between 400 and 600 amps. The electrical resistance of tungsten would have generated heat in the series circuit, so along with its abrasive surface oxide it would have been unsuitable. Machining the cooling waterways through the jaw would have also been a huge problem The conductivity characteristics are the same as the commutator or slip rings on an electric motor, where being in a lower temperature environment high purity copper is used.

@@wilsjane Ah, that makes a lot more sense with the additional current information.

@@kleetus92 We could have used gold, but with security and the jaws needing replacement every year or so, that may have been a step too far. 😊 As you may have guessed, I am a retired chartered engineer. I was also the chief engineer of the UKs leading cinema operator back in the days of rotating positive carbon arc-lamps. We had a few Ashcraft, but most of ours were Mole Richardson. They were coupled with Kalee 21 projectors in large theatres, but were later used mainly in 70mm houses.

Just after 4:00, can see the feed mechanism for the positive rod. The negative is the smaller one angled upward in the window. They are different sizes because they wear differently with DC. One scheme used for this type of feed was a motor for the positive rod that ran at approximately the speed the rods are expected to erode. The fine control over the arc was handled both manually and automatically by a solenoid. In the video you can see him periodically checking the arc to make sure the motor is approximately on track, occasionally adjusting the negative rod and/or feed motor speed manually to correct for "out of bounds" operation. The solenoid has a limited reach, and since the arc has to run for relatively long periods, the motor for the positive rod keeps the solenoid in it's operating range. Far as each rod's lifespan, this varies but they do "burn" relatively quickly. You can see the answer to this at the same general point in the video... Right next to the collar holding the rod (to the left of the feed chain) is the end of the current rod and the beginning of the next. If everything is dialed in right, the operator doesn't need to do much to keep the light coming. A similar mechanism is used in optical disc players (CD, DVD, BluRay)... A motor with a screw drive handles the coarse movement of the laser assembly, and a much more restricted-in-movement servo mechanism handles the fine control of the lens.

Really the machine does most of the work as far as maintaining the arc. If they had to manually keep every aspect of the arc in check, they would have needed to hire someone to do only that, "full time". That said, it's still quite a bit more labor intensive than xenon, for sure.