The exposition was lit in a new way, and the Scintillator was the flourish on top. W. D'A. Ryan of General Electric, put in charge of the exposition's Bureau of Illumination, avoided the old method of outlining buildings in bare bulbs. Instead masked floodlights washed the travertine walls, colors and sculpture, so the architecture was 'as distinct by night as by day, and even more beautiful' (Todd). Direct lighting was kept for a few places, above all the Zone, with its festoons and colored lanterns. Ryan had already used scintillator displays at Niagara Falls in 1907 and New York's Hudson-Fulton Celebration (Wikipedia).
The Scintillator itself stood on 'Moro Castle,' a small mole projecting east from the northwest corner of the Yacht Harbor. It was two banks of 48 searchlights, each 36 inches across and fitted with changeable colored gelatin screens. Forty-eight Marines ran it in squads under four corporals, who took orders by telephone from a first sergeant and megaphoned them to the men. Across the harbor a locomotive stood on the fireworks pier to supply steam clouds, with a pierced steam-pipe standard beside it, and 275 steel mortars buried in sand fired bombs 500 ft into the air.
Three nights a week from 7:45 the program ran for an hour. Beams fanned into the southwest until they seemed to converge like railroad tracks, lit plumes of steam and smoke, crossed 'in chromatic quadrilles' on the clouds rolling in the Golden Gate, and ended with an Aurora Borealis held for half an hour. The Guide's list of effects reads like a circus bill: the Beam Dance, Spook's Parade, Plumes of Paradise, Devil's Fan, Chromatic Wheels, Fairy Feathers.
Had anyone been looking this way from Mars he must have thought somebody had at least struck a match.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LXIII
At a glance
- Todd called it 'the greatest blaze of artificial light ever radiated from one spot on the earth, down to that time.'
- The general illumination began nightly at 7:30 with a single beam on the Adventurous Bowman atop the Column of Progress (Todd vol. 2).
- A sample program: salutes of maroons, an Aurora Borealis centered on the Tower of Jewels, beam drills ('Luminous Plaids and Birth of Color'), a white fan centered on Tamalpais, 'Fighting serpents and octopus,' 'The spirit of the Twentieth Century,' and the American Flag (Todd vol. 2).
- The General Electric Company's Illumination Department spent thousands of dollars on experiments at Schenectady for the exposition (Todd vol. 2).
- At a final test of the lighting on February 15, 1915, Edwin Markham called it 'the greatest revelation of beauty that was ever seen on the earth' (Todd vol. 2).
Afterward
The searchlight show ended with the fair. The Scintillator pier stayed as the Yacht Harbor's breakwater (Todd vol. 5).
The site today
Present-day photographs and video of this spot are being made for the film. You can stand there yourself: it is a stop on the self-guided walk.
On the walk: S22 The Scintillator's mole
Out on the breakwater east of the St. Francis Yacht Club, toward the Wave Organ
Have a photo of this spot? Email it to hello@288days.com with code S22 and up to 50 characters of credit. It appears here and in the film.
Where it stood
The Scintillator and the Exposition Illumination stood at about 37.80728 N, 122.44487 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →
Sources
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. LXIII ('And There Was Light')
- Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), Illumination
- Barry, The City of Domes (1915), Features that Ought to be Noted by Night
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5, ch. XXXVIII
- Wikipedia: Walter D'Arcy Ryan, earlier scintillators