Originally Posted by
Greg
lasermaster1977, I was bowled by the photo of your quad mount you posted a bit ago. Elegance and efficiency... If laser show was a weapon it would look like that. Do I understand correctly you built projection systems which included your appleII work, and you also performed live planetarium shows in the 1980s?
Thanks for your kind words. And yes, guilty as charged. I started designing & doing laser cloud and open-loop scanning projectors and analog consoles for short HeNe effects in regular astronomy related planetarium shows around late 1975 or early '76 thru '78. In the summer of '77 I attended a national planetarium conference in Boulder, CO and saw my first Lasaerium. That's when I knew with certainty it was mostly just simple and sophisticated scanned Lissajous images, stars and other background effects. That grew into my contracting out as Projected Imagery, Inc. to do full-fledge live RYGB laser shows at the same planetarium beginning the very last of Dec. 1978 thru '81 using more sophisticated consoles. The first Apple II DAC came along in early '79. That's about the time I started getting more and more corporate and other live performance work that lasted thru the very end of 1988. I did occasional abstract and graphics programming for two local planetariums for the next4-5 years, and after the millennium did some live laser accompaniment (using one of my latest Apple IIe systems and 1W mixed-gas ion lasers with G120Ds & AOMs I sold to those planetariums) for live stage bands at a Ft. Worth venue run by another former laserist and good friend. Those were my last true live performances. The quad mount you referenced was the result of my determination to mount 4 pairs of galvos as close together as physically practical for a variety of reasons. Good times.
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