The History of Lightwright... Or, "What Does John Do In His Spare Time?"

Way back in the dark ages of 1973, John McKernon took his first lighting class at the North Carolina School of the Arts and learned that a Dimmer Hookup and Instrument Schedule both listed the exact same information, just in a different order. He understood WHY, but it still seemed like an awful lot of work, especially after he'd worn down three pencils doing one class project... Flash ahead to the spring of 1979. John is designing for Pauline Koner's dance company and also running (with Campbell Baird and David Lockner) a scene painting shop. The shop is doing very well, but the headaches of doing the weekly payroll aren't much fun, and he's the only one who seems to know how to do it. So while John is on tour with Pauline, the payroll molders. And the touring, while fun, is getting tedious. The company is doing the university circuit, where the light plot is basically the same at every stop, but the actual equipment used is different, depending on what's available at the theatre. So once or twice a week, John has to draw up a new light plot that's pretty much the same as the old one - but not. To help make things easier, he's been using a generic sort of plot where all the lights look the same, but the dimmer hookup and instrument schedule still have to be hand written and customized for each and every theatre. On that fateful April weekend in Raleigh, the dancers have run off to the beach. John is stuck in his room, doing yet another boring set of paperwork. He has writer's cramp and thinks to himself "@#$@#$ An idiot could do this! A machine could do this..." Whereupon he hops in the car and drives to the local shopping mall, where he looks at these new things called Personal Computers. There's a dealer selling Apple computers, which look really fun, but they don't have anything that would help with the paperwork problems. So he wanders into Radio Shack, where he finds the TRS-80. It has 32k of RAM and a cassette tape to store programs and data. But even better, it has software called Tape Payroll! And it comes with BASIC, a programming language that the salesman assures him he can use to write his own lighting paperwork program. And the whole thing only costs $3,200... So back to the hotel room to call Campbell to convince him that the shop needs to spend the money. Next call is to Alice, John's younger sister, who once took a programming class in high school. She says BASIC's pretty simple and that he could probably write something with it. So the appropriate $$ are paid, and on his return to New York, John sits down and starts work. Campbell becomes a "computer widow" as the years slog by... John adds 16k of RAM (for another $700), teaches himself BASIC and Z80 assembly and eventually produces "Electric Assistant", something only he could love. But it works! Never mind that it takes half an hour to save a 100-unit show onto the tape for safekeeping whenever the computer is turned off. Fast forward to 1982 - John gets a floppy drive the minute they come out -- upgrades to a TRS-80 Model 3, with TWO floppy drives! At the time, he's teaching at SUNY-Stony Brook, and the IBM PC has just been announced. Bob Heller, who's the technical director of the Fine Arts Center, thinks John should port the software to the IBM platform. Well and good, but John doesn't begin to have the $$ to buy one of these expensive new computers. Bob buys the Fine Arts Center an IBM PC and lets John use it during off hours to start work on rewriting things, including all that finely-crafted Z-80 assembly code that is completely incompatible with the processor used in IBM PCs. Then Theatre Crafts publishes an article on lighting software. John's reaction is, as usual, "MINE does it better than that!" - and promptly calls Rosco to talk to see if they're interested in selling ALD. Bob Saturn (who handles software for Rosco) likes it, but suggests that it needs to be made less idiosyncratic. If John will do that, they'll sell it for him. The bad news is that John then has to buy a new PC-compatible computer, a Compaq "luggable". The screen is tiny, but it has two floppy drives and 512k of memory and only weighs 28 pounds! By this point, the program is called "ALD" and is up and running on the Compaq. Rosco starts selling it, and the pennies start trickling in. Fortunately, John keeps designing lighting to pay the rent... By 1985 John is working for Ken Billington, who has his own custom-made lighting software, not ALD. One night John and Ken are in the office using Ken's software to update the paperwork for "Grind" (a huge Broadway flop). Changing the color of the "Wreath" special to "N/C", the software promptly changes the purpose of the light to "N/C" as well. So they go to the purpose and edit it back to "Wreath", whereupon the software changes the color of every light with "N/C" to "Wreath." Changing the color sback to "N/C" changes all the purposes to "N/C". John's Compaq has been sitting in the office unused for some time... In desperation, they fire up ALD and re-enter all of the "Grind" paperwork, print it out, and go home exhausted. After that, Ken decides that he really does like ALD, but wants it to do MORE... John listens and learns from Ken and other smart folks in the business. Change follows change (including an upgrade to ALD/Pro), and eventually it's obvious that yet another new version needs to be released, with a new and more professional name. But what to call it? John sits down at lunch one day in 1988 with Clifton Taylor and Ken Smith, and they make a list of every conceivable name - silly, stupid, clever, or weird -- and eventually winnow the list down to about 20 possibilities. Next step is to ask Ken Billington and the other folks in the office which one(s) they like. Nobody agrees (of course, they're all lighting designers!), but eventually "Lightwright" wins. By 1992, Lightwright 2 follows Lightwright 1, and John buys his first Macintosh. Smitten immediately, he writes the Mac version of Lightwright, which only takes a few years. In the meantime, the industry has grown dramatically and shows have gotten too big. So in the spring of 1999, Lightwright 3 is born. And within a week, the drumbeat begins for an even bigger version. In September of 2003, Lightwright 4 is finished, and even before the first sale is made, the list begins for Lightwright 5...