Showmen's Trade Review (Jan-Mar 1947)

SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW, February 1, 1947 E-29 USEFUL BOOKS IMPROVED BLACK LIGHT SEEN AT RADIO CITY One of the eternal headaches of the worker in the theatrical vineyard is the immense variety of the technical plowshares and pruning hooks he needs in his daily chores. At times his gadgets behave so well for so long that he almost forgets them. Then something happens, and all in an instant the poor theatreman is called on to remember everything he ever knew about acoustics or optics or something, plus a great deal more that he never did know. Further still, new devices reach the theatre from time to time, sometimes in rapid succession. Whoever limits his information too narrowly to just the gadgets he has today, ignoring the broader background on which their designs are based, must find that the dingbat he has to deal with tomorrow arrives as another complete mystery. A rather unusual book has just come from the press. It should be very useful to the experienced theatreman as a handy, compact review, and to the beginner as enlightening collateral reading. It is called "Scientific Instruments" and deals with lenses, vacuum tubes, acoustical devices and electrical meters, among other maters. Very simply written, in highly accurate but in almost wholly untechnical language, the book performs an exceptional service not to be found in more conventional texts on theatre apparatus precisely because it does not deal with theatre equipment only. To the contrary, it presents compact, readable summaries, rather easy for any intelligent person to understand, of the instruments used in a number of different sciences, and puts instrumentalities of the theatre in their proper places among the others. Many will find that this treatment makes theatre apparatus items easier both to understand and to remember, by giving them a comprehensive and understandable background. For the same reason, new devices as they arrive will be more readily understood and remembered. Television, for example, must become very much less a mystery to anyone who has read through the three deftly-written pages that set forth the construction and functioning of a cathoderay tube. The book is abundantly illustrated with both photographs and diagrams that facilitate understanding of each device or mechanism treated. There is even a threeposition drawing of the maltese cross of the intermittent movement of a projector, as clear and as easy to digest as any this reviewer has ever seen. The extensive •.reatment of lenses is illuminated by diagrams of some thirteen basic types and more than twenty compound types. Material for the book was supplied, according to the jacket, by fifteen specialists and many large industrial organizations. The editor is Herbert J. Cooper, head of the engineering department of South-West Essex Technical College and School of Art, in England. Publishers are the Chemical Publishing Company, Inc., of Brooklyn, New York. Price is $6.00. There are 305 pages, which include 11 pages of thoroughly detailed index. (#18). Further progress in blacklight ornamentation, achieving additional refinements, has been made by Alexander Strobl of Stroblite Company in connection with the recent Christmas Tree display at Radio City, New York, and is now available to all theatres. Ultra-violet Christmas tree displays at Radio City are spectacular. New Yorkers satiated with all the lights of Broadway linger to stare at the unique tree lighting. This year's refinement, however, related to the tree itself. Formerly, its myriad green needles were obscured and substantially invisible in the darkness and against the glow of the ornamentation. In 1946 a new paint caused each tiny spine to glow in its natural shade of green under the same ultra-violet excitation that il luminated the multi-color globes. The decorations no longer obscured the tree. Strobl is the inventor of Sterno canned heat and many other chemical innovations. His blacklight paints and dyes are widely used in and out of the theatre field — in the costumes of the ballet dancers at Radio City Music Hall; at the Sonja Henie Ice Show, and by many others. In addition to entertainment and ordinary blacklight decoration, they can be used in the theatre to change the appearance of an auditorium completely, Strobl reveals. Switch the ordinary lighting off, the ultra-violet on, and a suitably treated auditorium will appear to have been instantly re-decorated in totally different patterns and colors, the inventor declares. (#19). ... To Help You Give the Best Show In Town In DeVRY's new Theater Projectors — incorporating both picture mechanism and soundhead in one single unit — you get the wealth of knowledge and experience gained in the vast laboratory of war production. You get design refinements, resulting in simplicity of mechanism and elimination of unnecessary parts — to make maintenance economical and servicing easy. You need to see them in action to realize the rock-steady, flickerfree screening of the new DeVRYS . . . the high fidelity of their true-to-life Headquarters for Drive-ln Theatre Projection and Sound Equipment sound, from the softest whisper and the warmest tone to the weirdest shriek or the roar of a mighty organ. . . . No perceptible flutter, hum or wow! Topflight performance for either black-andwhite newsreel or Technicolor feature. Priced to enable any theater to afford NEW equipment. DeVRY'S Famed "G-l" Projectors Now Available Its war contract: completed, DeVRY'S famed "G-I" Projector is now in production — quickly available. Before you buy projection equipment mail coupon to DeVRY. 5 Time Winner 'DeVRY alone has been awarded five consecutive Army-Navy "E's" for Excellence in the production of Motion Picture Sound Equipment. r DeVRY CORPORATION, Dept, STR-D2 1111 Armitage Ave., Chicago 14, Illinois * Please send details about the NEW DeVRY 35mm Theater Projectors... Amplifiers and Speaker Systems. Name. . Address . J l_ City State Theater Capacity.