We continue our tour through ETC’s repository of gear and ephemera of lighting days gone by with another entry from the company’s early history: the 1982 Entertainment Lighting Control System (ELC). After a number of years partnering with Berkey Colortran to produce the Channel Track desks, the ELC was the first console sold by ETC under its own name.
The ELC wasn’t a mass-market product. The desk pictured above was one of six designed and built for Disney’s EPCOT Center. Then a young company of only 10 employees – barely moved into their first garage – ETC won the contract based largely on the willingness to build a desk around the park’s specifications. The manufacturing process was all-hands-on-deck for the small company; in fact, the console’s metal body (as well as those of the the other consoles featured in this post) was built and painted by present-day-CEO Fred Foster.
The desk featured 96 control channels, two external (monochrome) monitors, 24 submasters and two timed faders. The flat, plastic-coated keys of the programming surface served a practical purpose: weatherproofing the console for outdoor shows at the park. To compensate for the flat keys, the desk included a form of haptic feedback; solenoids mounted on the face panel would click and vibrate to indicate that a key had been pressed. This board remained in use at the Epcot until 1993, when it was replaced by an Expression console.
The ELS did eventually get a proper ETC product name. In 1982, the ELC evolved into Concept – the first ETC-brand board marketed to the broader lighting industry.
This desk gave rise to the Concept / Idea / Vision / MicroVision / Expression line of consoles. By the time the Concept 250 came out in 1983, the flat, plastic-covered buttons were discarded in favor of the square keys with indicator lights that will be familiar to anyone who’s used an Express console.