Vari-Lite

VARI*LITE is the brand name of one of the first automated, variable-colour stage lighting systems to be created. Their intelligent lighting fixtures are commonly used in theatre, concerts, television, film and corporate events.

The origins of Vari-Lite date to the late 1960s, when college friends Jack Calmes and Rusty Brutsché played together in a Texas-based blues band. They built a sound system for their shows which was of such quality, that other acts asked to rent it from them.

In March 1970 Calmes and Brutsché, together with sound engineer Jack Maxson, incorporated Showco, with the intention of hiring sound systems to regional rock concerts. The company initially operated two sound systems and two trucks from Maxson's garage.

The company quickly grew, both in size and reputation, and added lighting equipment to its inventory in 1972.

By the end of the 1970s, with the competition growing, the company began looking for new ways to compete. In particular, Showco's lighting equipment was fast becoming outdated and the company could not afford to replace it.

Showco had a very active R&D department, continuously looking for new technology. At the time, many companies within this market were trying to solve the problem of a producing reliable and robust colour change unit for lighting fixtures. Many of these took the form of wheels, semaphore-type devices or scrolls of Gel. However, coloured gel had a tendency to burn or rip if used incorrectly.

In 1980, one of the company engineers, Jim Bornhorst, while looking at alternative methods of colouring light, realised that dichroic filters display a strange side effect: when you twist them, the frequency of light on which the filter operates, shifts—causing it to apparently change colour. That might have been the extent of their advancement if not for a barbecue lunch in the fall of 1980. At that gathering, the idea of adding two extra motors to the fixture to actually make the light move was conceived. This "eureka" moment facilitated an all-out building effort for a fully automated lighting system. This idea, coupled with the recent appearance on the market of the General Electric Marc 350 projector lamp resulted in a prototype in December 1980, that had taken twelve weeks to build.

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