Page reprinted from NJD, Used By Permission

The first effects lighting appeared long before disco's started. Before the war it was discovered that if you shine a light on a ball covered with mirrors that you get one beam off every mirror. My earliest recollection of a mirror ball was in the 1942 film Casablanca, with Humpfrey Bogart. So when disco's came along in the late sixties the mirror ball was the first effect to adopted. General lighting was provide by red bulbs, to give a warm glow to the room and a spotlight with a spinning wheel in front of it, with a hole in it, provided a strobe effect. Soon after that a photographic lamp "Ultra Violet", which made white things glow in the dark, was quickly transferred into the disco's when some bright spark found that you could see ladies underwear glowing straight through their clothes. Unfortunately it also made everybody's teeth glow green as well!

The first real dedicated disco lights were invented in about 1968 when someone decided to control lighting using electronics (Transistors and Thyristors in those days, no silicon chips) the idea was to flash lamps to different frequencies, originally three channels. Basically one lamp would flash in time with the Bass frequency, one in time with the Middle and one in time with the Treble. For the first time Sound To Light was born.

Apart from a brief period of popularity for the "oil wheel", from 1968 to the about 1973 Sound to light was King! And it soon progressed from 3 channel to four channel, using Bass, Lower Middle, Upper Middle and Treble. However Sound to light had a basic problem, whilst the lights were following the music and reacting to different frequencies, the human eye had great difficulty in relating the visual effect to the music. It was just too complex.

In 1973 a new idea was born. Instead of flashing each channel to a different frequency the new idea was to make the lights only react to the bass beat but to light each channel in turn (e.g. First Bass beat = light channel one, next Bass beat = light channel two, next Bass beat = light channel three, next Bass beat = light channel four, next Bass beat = back to channel one etc.) This gave an easy and dramatic sound activated effect that the eye could follow easily and the Sound Sequencer or Sound Chaser was born. This is still the most popular way of controlling ordinary spot lamps for effects lighting and NJD's EURO 4E is an excellent example.

The next big change occurred in about 1978 with the arrival of the "Smoke Machine". The Smoke Machine brought a whole new dimension to lighting and for the first time produced 3D effects. Instead of just seeing the lamps flashing, provided you used the right kind of lamp, you could see the whole beam passing through the air. This heralded the reign of the "PIN SPOT" (PAR36) with a narrow concentrated beam. Ordinary spot lamps (PAR38, R95 etc.) produced only a soft flood and could not give the effect needed in smoke, but the PAR36 Pin Spot was perfect (It's also the right lamp for use with mirrors). Sound Chasers were used to create stunning effects, sequencing and patterning Pin Spots in smoke.

Until now every effort had been made to make the lighting interpret the sound, but things were afoot to change that! The Pin Spot starter to be used in Motorised Effects, these effects either spun the lamps, the Helicopter, or swept them from side to side, the scanner. The job of turning these stunning effects on at the right moment became the job of the DJ, along with playing the records, and in bigger night clubs they even employed a "Light Jockey" (New Job!). With this came the requirement for more technology, there had to be ways of switching these effects on and off at the right moment, without all the clicks and bangs through the sound system that you would get with ordinary light switches, whenever the DJ required and the Switch Panel joined the market (See EURO 6S).