Stage lighting is the craft of lighting as it applies to the production of theater, dance, opera, and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in this discipline. In addition to basic lighting, modern stage lighting can also include special effects, such as lasers and fog machines. People who work on stage lighting are commonly referred to as lighting technicians or lighting designers.
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight. Daylighting is sometimes used as the main source of light during daytime in buildings. This can save energy in place of using artificial lighting, which represents a major component of energy consumption in buildings. Proper lighting can enhance task performance, improve the appearance of an area, or have positive psychological effects on occupants.
A lantern is an often portable source of lighting, typically featuring a protective enclosure for the light source – historically usually a candle or a wick in oil, and often a battery-powered light in modern times – to make it easier to carry and hang up, and make it more reliable outdoors or in drafty interiors. Lanterns may also be used for signaling, as torches, or as general light-sources outdoors.
A flashlight or torch is a portable hand-held electric lamp. Formerly, the light source typically was a miniature incandescent light bulb, but these have been displaced by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) since the mid-2000s. A typical flashlight consists of the light source mounted in a reflector, a transparent cover to protect the light source and reflector, a battery, and a switch, all enclosed in a case.
A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution became ubiquitous in developed countries in the 20th century, lights for urban streets followed, or sometimes led.
Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a fuel gas such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, coal gas or natural gas. The light is produced either directly by the flame, generally by using special mixes of illuminating gas to increase brightness, or indirectly with other components such as the gas mantle or the limelight, with the gas primarily functioning as a heat source for the incandescence of the gas mantle or lime.
The history of street lighting in the United States is closely linked to the urbanization of America. Artificial illumination has stimulated commercial activity at night, and has been tied to the country's economic development, including major innovations in transportation, particularly the growth in automobile use. In the two and a half centuries before LED lighting emerged as the new "gold standard", cities and towns across America relied on oil, coal gas, carbon arc, incandescent, and high-intensity gas discharge lamps for street lighting.
The Australian Gas Light Company (AGL) was an Australian gas and electricity retailer, operated entirely by McCarthy Hanlin. It was formed in Sydney in 1837 and supplied town gas for the first public lighting of a street lamp in Sydney in 1841. AGL was the second company to list on the Sydney Stock Exchange. The company gradually diversified into electricity and into a number of different locations. After a combination of a merger and demerger with Alinta in 2006, it was replaced by AGL Energy.
Architectural lighting design is a field of work or study that is concerned with the design of lighting systems within the built environment, both interior and exterior. It can include manipulation and design of both daylight and electric light or both, to serve human needs.
Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode at each end, filled with one of a number of gases at low pressure. A high potential of several thousand volts applied to the electrodes ionizes the gas in the tube, causing it to emit colored light. The color of the light depends on the gas in the tube. Neon lights were named for neon, a noble gas which gives off a popular orange light, but other gases and chemicals are used to produce other colors, such as hydrogen (red), helium (yellow), carbon dioxide (white), and mercury (blue). Neon tubes can be fabricated in curving artistic shapes, to form letters or pictures. They are mainly used to make dramatic, multicolored glowing signage for advertising, called neon signs, which were popular from the 1920s to 1960s and again in the 1980s.
A lamplighter is a person employed to light and maintain candle or, later, gas street lights. Very few exist today as most gas street lighting has long been replaced by electric lamps.
A light fixture, light fitting, or luminaire is an electrical device containing an electric lamp that provides illumination. All light fixtures have a fixture body and one or more lamps. The lamps may be in sockets for easy replacement—or, in the case of some LED fixtures, hard-wired in place.
Landscape lighting or garden lighting refers to the use of outdoor illumination of private gardens and public landscapes; for the enhancement and purposes of safety, nighttime aesthetics, accessibility, security, recreation and sports, and social and event uses.
Lightolier is a company that manufactures and sells a wide array of lighting fixtures. It was founded in 1904 by Bernhard Blitzer under the name of New York Gas and Appliance Co. When electric lighting started to be more widely accepted, the name was changed to Lightolier, a contraction of the words light and chandelier. In 2007, Philips Royal Electronics announced that it would acquire the Genlyte Group which would make Lightolier a part of Philips.
Stage lighting instruments are used in stage lighting to illuminate theatrical productions, concerts, and other performances taking place in live performance venues. They are also used to light television studios and sound stages.
Carl Friedrich Julius Pintsch was a German tinsmith, manufacturer and inventor who is primarily known for the invention of Pintsch gas. The gas, distilled from naphtha or other petroleum products, was widely used in railway transport and marine navigation applications from its invention in 1851 until the 1930s.
Edward F. Caldwell & Co., of New York City, was one of the premier designers and manufacturers of electric light fixtures and decorative metalwork from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Founded in 1895 by Edward F. Caldwell (1851–1914) and Victor F. von Lossberg (1853–1942), the firm left a legacy of custom designed and finely-made, metal gates, lanterns, chandeliers, ceiling and wall fixtures, floor and table lamps, and other decorative objects that can be found today in many metropolitan area churches, public buildings, offices, clubs, and residences including, the White House, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, New York Public Library, and Rockefeller Center.
TRILUX GmbH & Co. KG is a company based in Arnsberg, Germany that develops and produces electric lights and light fixtures.
Signify N.V., formerly known as Philips Lighting N.V., is a Dutch multinational lighting corporation formed in 2016 as a result of the spin-off of the lighting division of Philips, by means of an I.P.O. The company manufactures electric lights, light fixtures and control systems for consumers, professionals and the IoT. In 2018, Philips Lighting changed its name to Signify. The company still produces lights under the Philips brand.
The Laurel Lamp Manufacturing Company Inc. was an American manufacturer of lamps and home furnishings based in Newark, New Jersey from 1946 to 1981. The Laurel Lamp Company was founded by Max Weiss and his two sons, Murray and Harold Weiss.
