Rob has been working in and
writing about lighting for more than
25 years, on shows around the
world. He wonders if this makes
him a classic... or just old!classic gear
iTECH
WWW.LSIONLINE.COM • APRIL 2020 73C
Just occasionally, a tool from our industry
escapes our industry, sometimes even
escapes being a tool, transcends all of that
and just becomes a word that everyone uses, everyone
understands often without pausing for a moment to
wonder just why it means that or just where that word
came from.
One of those rare examples is limelight. “The focus of
public attention” the dictionary has it as; “the shock win
has thrust him into the limelight” the example it follows
up with. But then a little footnote, acknowledging the
origin: “intense white light obtained by heating lime,
formerly used in theatres.” Which makes it sound all so
easy...
Truth be told, it was a skill - another skill now lost.
Think about the challenges of running a followspot today, the
practiced art of anticipating where the performer is going to
go next and being ready to go smoothly with them. Imagine
doing that while simultaneously, constantly adjusting a block of
quicklime - calcium oxide - within a white-hot flame jet from
a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen to keep the light alive. That
was the skill of the limelight operator.
There’s another word now that we tend to think of in one
particular context within light, “incandescent”. We use it almost
interchangeably with tungsten to describe filament light bulbs.
But it doesn’t really mean that; it means any time you create
light by, effectively, making fire, then controlling it. Gaslight
was incandescent. Limelight was also incandescent - but much
brighter.
The effect was discovered outside our industry in around 1816.
Quicklime can be heated to over 2,500ÝC before melting; do that
and it creates an intense, white light through a combination of
incandescence (emitting electromagnetic radiation, including
visible light) and candoluminesence (an
effect where materials exposed to high
temperatures give off more light than would
be expected by incandescence alone). As well
as being brighter than its contemporary, gas,
the tiny source of light meant that it could
be collected and directed by a lens. Records
show it being used in this way at London’sCovent Garden Theatre as
early as 1837.
But of course, there was
that need for constant care
and attention. The needle-like
point of the flame would burn
out that spot of quicklime, so
the position of the block had
to be constantly adjusted to expose fresh material to the intense
heat. That meant limelight fixtures needed handlers, someone to
look after them. While the lights could be used in a fixed focus,
having an operator meant they could also be moved, even to follow.
They became the tool to pick a key performer out of the general
lighting, to make them the brightest thing on stage. The star was,
quite literally, basking in the limelight.
It became a name for this type of lighting equipment and
those who operated it - interchangeably, the limes - even
as the coming of electricity and the carbon arc (which also
required careful management by its operator) and then later
the discharge arc lamps changed the actual
light source used.
As with any change of this kind, doubtless
many preferred the quality of the old source
over the new. But even when practicality
pushed out of daily use, the word ‘limelight’
just stuck around... I
Lighting by lime: P //plasa.me/lightingbylimeWireless DMX control
for props, costumes,
and scenery, since 1991
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Limelight | by Rob Halliday...