Jim assembled an engineering team of Tom Walsh for digital hardware, Brooks Taylor for software, John Covington for analog electronics and motors and himself as the project manager and optical and mechanical designer. Greg Bright, who was the Showco electronics shop manager, was responsible for managing the assembly of the lights and the power and data distribution (ACS) system. Tom Walsh would design and hand build the control system. Tom used wire wrap technology to build the circuit boards rather than soldered PC boards to save time. The plan was to build 50 VL1 automated lights with five spares for a total of 55 lights and a 32 channel computer control system (18 of the lights would share a control channel with another light). Everyone worked long days, seven days a week to design and build the equipment since there was only nine months until delivery day in September, 1981. {{< StoryImage id="showco-012-vl1-developers" title="VL1 engineering team" caption="Left to Right, Tom Walsh-digital hardware, Brooks Taylor-software, Jim Bornhorst-optical design and team leader and John Covington-analog electronics, the engineering team that designed the first Vari-Lite VL1 System in 1981. Pictured is the second generation VL1 Control Console." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} ### First Vari-Lite Control System Hardware 1981 The control system consisted of a control console and an electronics rack full of circuit boards that connected to the lights with a serial data link. The lights each had a thumbwheel switch that assigned the light to one of the 32 control channels. Tom used wire wrap technology to make all of the circuit boards and also for the back planes of the racks that held the circuit boards. Wire wrap technology used pins and a special gun that would wrap pieces of wire around the pins to create the circuits rather than etching circuits on a PC board and using solder for the connections. Tom’s design used five RCA 1802 microprocessors. {{< StoryImage id="showco-003-console-wire-wrap-closeup" title="Wire wrap board" caption="The wire wrap circuit board in the Vari-Lite VL1 console control panel 1981." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} The first Vari-Lite VL1 32 Channel Control System that was hand built by Tom Walsh using wire wrap technology and programmed by Brooks Taylor. {{< StoryImage id="showco-002-1st-vl-console" title="First VL1 control system" caption="The first Vari-Lite VL1 32 Channel Control System that was hand built by Tom Walsh using wire wrap technology and programmed by Brooks Taylor." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} ### Software for the First Vari-Lite VL1 Control System 1981 Brooks Taylor wrote the software by hand on paper in machine language code and then digitized the code using a teletype machine. The teletype spit out a punched paper tape with each key press encoded as a punch pattern in the tape. Tom Walsh built a machine using an IMSAI 8080 microcomputer to execute a code that Brooks wrote to convert Brook’s machine language code to an instruction set the 1802 processor could use. The IMSAI microcomputer would read the paper tape and spit out 8 bit binary processor instructions that were loaded into an EPROM - a UV erasable memory chip that stored the processors’ instructions and could be reprogrammed. Brooks designed the layout and functionality of the control panel and wrote all of the software by himself. Brooks also wrote the software for the serial data link that connected the control system to the VL1 lights. ### First Vari-Lite VL1 Luminaire 1981 Jim Bornhorst and John Covington designed the first Vari-Lite VL1 luminaire and the first VL1 ACS power and data system to power and control the lights with both power and data connected to the light with one cable. The design featured an upper enclosure that housed the pan mechanism, the electronic power supply for the GE Marc 350 lamp and the electronics for the low voltage power supply. The head featured three dichroic color wheels, a dimmer, a beam size and pattern wheel, the tilt mechanism, optical lenses and a cooling fan.

{{< StoryImage id="showco-006-vl1-head-top-view" title="VL1 head (top)" caption="Vari-Lite VL1 Head 1981. Back to front, GE Marc350 lamp, color wheel assembly with three dichroic color wheels and a beam size aperture wheel, condensing lens and dimmer/shutter mechanism." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-007-vl1-head-bottom-view" title="VL1 head (underside)" caption="Underside of the Vari-Lite VL1 Head with servo electronics PCB and cooling fan 1981." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-008-vl1-color-assy" title="Color and aperture module" caption="Vari-Lite VL1 Color and Aperture Wheel Module 1981." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-009-vl1-color-wheels" title="Dichroic color wheels" caption="Vari-Lite VL1 Dichroic Color Wheels 1981. When used in various combinations, the three wheels produced 60 colors. The deep saturated colors like deep red and UV were particularly impressive." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-016-vl1-anka-lights" title="VL1 automated luminaire" caption="Vari-Lite VL1 automated luminaire designed and 55 units built in eight months for the 1981 Genesis ABACAB tour. The thumbwheel switch on the upper enclosure assigned the light to one of 32 control channels. The light was connected to the control console with a serial data link." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}}

### The Magic Moment August 1981 With heroic effort by everyone, the 55 lights and the control system were completed in August 1981. and We hung the 55 VL1’s from a horseshoe shaped truss system in the shop as the engineers performed testing and debugging of the equipment. One day when all of the VL1 lights were turned on with the white light beams pointed down towards the floor, Tom Littrell went over to the Vari-Lite console and spun the pan knob which caused all 55 white light beams to move at the same time. The effect was shocking. We all gasped and said “do that again!” The effect of seeing all of those hard-edged high color temperature light beams move together was a lighting effect that we had never seen and had never been possible before that moment. We immediately knew that the kinetic effect of the moving VL1’s was going to be a major deal in the industry. We had never envisioned the moving light effect during the design and construction of the Vari-Lite system. We thought we were building a repositionable automated light that would be moved between cues with the light beams dimmed out. The kinetic effect of the moving beams was a complete surprise and it proved to be, along with the kinetic effect of the instantaneous dichroic color changes, the defining feature of the Vari-Lite system. These features would not have existed without Jim’s decision to change the design of the VL0 from the pivoting dichroic filters to the dichroic color wheels. {{< StoryImage id="showco-001-magic-moment-81" title="The Magic Moment" caption="The Magic Moment-the first time we saw hard edged white light beams move in unison, August 1981." credit="Photo Jim Bornhorst" size="medium" >}}

Showco History