Trans-Lux

The company was created by Percy Norman Furber, an Englishman, who moved to the United States in October 1918, after a time spent drilling for oil and mining quicksilver in Mexico.

Three years later, using a fine high-quality natural silk American Lux Products managed to create its first successful screen, with initial sales going mostly to schools and churches.

Furber combined the best aspects of both methods, by enlarging the stock quotations from the running ticker tape and displaying them onto a rear projection screen.

Like every ticker of the time it was a mechanical format, but by using yellow dots on a black background it gave the illusion of electronically generated green letters and numbers.

[citation needed] By 1927 the company had created a much larger, commercial-sized theater screen and took it, along with its rear projector system and a new wide-angle lens, to the motion picture industry.

In accordance with its news "heritage" the theatre featured a program made up exclusively of "shorts" (usually comedy routines or musical numbers) and newsreels.

Three more locations were added over the next three years, with architect Thomas W. Lamb designing the theater in Washington, D.C.. Offering 600 seats covered in blue leather, its lobby decorated with sports murals by New York artist Andre Hudiakoff, it was one of the first public buildings in the city to have air conditioning.

The 1970 premiere of the San Francisco Experience, a 29-projector, seven-screen spectacular with 30 special effects inspired the company to hire its creators to develop a nearly $1 million budget multimedia entertainment film about New York City.

[citation needed] The show featured panoramic movie screens, slide projections, extensive light and sound systems, and a mannequin that dropped out of the ceiling to recreate the hanging of Nathan Hale.

They also developed a television program syndication service, and in association with Adventure Cartoon Productions produced the popular animated children's series: Felix the Cat[8] and The Mighty Hercules.

In 1967, they commissioned Titra Studios, a New York City recording company that provided English translations for foreign movies, to "Americanize" the new anime series, Speed Racer,[10] for domestic television.

[13][14] In 1940, Trans-Lux purchased a patent for a remote-control signaling system that enabled small rounded pellets to form letters and numbers and travel around outdoor message signs.

By the early '60s, Trans-Lux began to see a need for greater investment in electronics as stock exchanges and brokerage firms were inundated with new, advanced techniques for gathering and projecting information.

In 1965, the company was shocked by the introduction of a new 45-foot (14 m)-long electronic display installed on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange by a competitor, Recognition Equipment Inc. (REI), of Dallas.

It was the highest quality, real-time, continuous flow wall display yet produced, and a new method of viewing up-to-the-minute stock market sales information.

Its ten-foot size made it perfect for brokerage offices, but perhaps the best news for Trans-Lux was that it no longer needed to rely on the Western Union ticker.

By 1969, Trans-Lux began installing the product for private investors, portfolio managers, pension fund administrators, investment advisors, and individual brokers.

Following the market decline, Trans-Lux management learned that their electronic display sales should not be overly dependent on a single industry, and decided to diversify.

The company formed an industrial sales department in 1970 under the leadership of Louis Credidio, who went after the commodity market and in 1971 sold an adaptation of the Personal Ticker, the T-900, to the Chicago Board of Trade.

Early in 1995, Trans-Lux acquired Integrated Systems Engineering, Inc., a full-service electronic sign manufacturing company, to broaden its outdoor signage capabilities, such as those found on billboards, or outside truck stops, banks, and sports arenas.

The indoor display division remained a major supplier of communications tools for the banking and financial community, but now theaters, museums, hotels, corporations, and military hospitals were customers.

Trans-Lux also entered the health care industry with products designed for hospitals, pharmacies, and outpatient clinics by offering critical information displays.

The three hundred feet of display in the Reds' installation featured over 273,500 pixels in an 8.6 billion color LED matrix, and has caught the attention of many professional sports teams due to its ability to optimize advertising space on arena and stadium tier fascias.

The scoreboard, located in the left outfield, is capable of displaying game scores, graphics, animations, player statistics, advertising and general information.

Trans-Lux now has major U.S. sales and service centers in Norwalk; New York; Atlanta; Chicago; and Torrance, California, in addition to their satellite offices throughout the U.S. and Canada.