Trans-Lux
Encyclopedia
Trans-Lux is a world leader in designing, selling, renting, installing and maintaining multi-color, real-time data
and LED
large-screen electronic information displays, but is primarily known as a major supplier of national stock ticker display devices for stock exchange
s. These indoor and outdoor displays are used worldwide in many industries including financial, banking, gaming, corporate, retail, healthcare, sports and transportation.
quicksilver
in Mexico. Furber was interested in developing a projection system that could be used in a lighted room, and enlisted the aid of a friend, Arthur Payne, a former employee of Thomas Edison
. Payne hit upon the idea of rear projection; projecting an image through a screen rather than on it. However, this concept required a finer and more translucent material for the screen than any that currently existed.
that Furber saw a truly profitable application for rear projection. At the time, brokers
obtained the latest stock quotes, provided by Western Union
's telegraph, or wire service, from a glass dome-topped ticker
. The machine printed the results onto a long thin piece of paper known as a ticker tape
, with the brokers closest to the printer having the advantage. Prior to this invention, any stock information was hand-written, usually on a chalk board; although the results were less immediate, they were better displayed. 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. In 1923, the company installed the first "Movie ticker" ticker tape projection system at the New York Stock Exchange. 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.
It is this stock ticker that provided the company's name: "Trans-Lux" meaning "moving light".
Financing this new operation required more capital, so Furber took his company public on August 26, 1925. It was listed on the New York Curb Exchange, which later became the American Stock Exchange
. Until being delisted in 2011 Trans-Lux stock was the oldest company to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. In 1925, the company had 41 installations on stock exchange floors and brokerage house boardrooms throughout the country.
In 1931, Percy Furber turned over company operations to his son, Percy. By this time, Trans-Lux had 4,000 stockholders, over 100 employees, and was valued at $2 million. In 1934, the company opened two more newsreel theaters in Brooklyn, NY and one in Philadelphia, PA. Three more locations were added over the next three years, with architect Thomas W. Lamb
designing the theater in Washington
. 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. Located one block away from the White House
, it was considered to be the most elegant Art Deco
theater in the capital, up until its untimely demolition in 1975.
In 1937 the company shortened its name to the Trans-Lux Corporation. Along with other theater-related businesses, it initially suffered during the postwar movie slump. Returning veterans were attending college on the GI Bill, marrying, and starting families. Newlyweds and young families with babies were usually on a budget and put the purchase of a home, a car, and new appliances ahead of going to the movies. The company's declining newsreel movie business quickly recovered when it switched to showing first-run feature films in 1949, but weekly theater attendance still experienced a dramatic drop: from 78.2 million in 1946 to 58 million by 1950, when the American public chose to sit at home in front of their new television sets rather than go out to the movies.
As this postwar middle-class began moving from the cities to the suburbs, shopping complexes to support them proliferated, and theaters followed. In 1964 Trans-Lux built its first shopping center theater, an 850-seat facility in Reisterstown Road Plaza
Mall in Baltimore, MD. By 1969, the company had brought large, modern theaters to five more suburban shopping centers, nearly doubling the size of its theater holdings, and by 1965 had 37 theaters in ten states.
By the end of the 1960s, the theater building boom was over as well. In 1973 Trans-Lux lost money on its theaters for the first time in years. The boom had aggravated the newly independent industry's problem of a shortage of quality movies. Bidding on films became fierce, and many companies split their single theaters into twins. Three screen and four screen theaters began appearing, and when Richard Brandt replaced Percy Furber as chairman of the board in 1974, the multiplex trend (with as many as 12 screens) was in full swing. Some of the company's theaters were split into two and three screen houses, and others were sold off entirely.
In the midst of this, Trans-Lux went into the business of multimedia
shows. 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. The September 28, 1973 opening of the 45-projector, 16-screen film was called "bedazzling and breathtaking" by The New York Times. "The New York Experience," which was housed in a sub-basement of the McGraw-Hill
Building in Rockefeller Center
, became the longest-running commercial multimedia show in history, until its demise in 1989. Despite its popularity, the show -- which 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
-- was forced to close due to escalating rent costs.
By 1981, Trans-Lux's theater holdings were reduced to 28 screens, concentrated in the Northeast, particularly Connecticut.
By the mid 1990s, the theater division invested in building new theaters in the western US, bringing the company's total to 65 screens. In 2000, the firm opened its own Los Angeles-based film booking office.
Trans-Lux soon began developing specialized rear-projection equipment for television studios, greatly expanded its engineering capacity and started supplying the studios with "Teleprocess" screens and projectors. When closed circuit television
(CCTV) appeared in the late '40's, Trans-Lux adapted that technology for viewing stock market information, and formed an electronics division to develop and sell CCTV systems in 1959. They also developed a television program syndication
service, and in association with Adventure Cartoon Productions
produced the popular animated childrens' series: Felix the Cat
and The Mighty Hercules
. The expanded business required Trans-Lux to move from its Brooklyn headquarters to a larger, five-story building in Long Island City.
In 1967, they commissioned Titra Studios
, a New York City recording company that provided English translations for foreign movies, to "Americanize" the new Japanese animated series, Speed Racer
, for domestic television. Trans-Lux retained the series until 1969, when it sold off its animated television holdings in order to concentrate on manufacturing illuminated stock market tickers. Trans-Lux's film catalog was purchased by independent distributor Alan Gleitsman, who Alan Enterprises continued to syndicate Speed Racer to independent TV stations throughout the 1970s. That same year the company moved its headquarters again, this time relocating to Norwalk, Connecticut,
Sign Corporation, which was the first signage corporation to first illuminate the "Great White Way" of Broadway
. By 1948 it was supplying electrical traveling message signs to advertisers, radio stations, and publishers throughout the country. At the same time, Trans-Lux had 1,400 stock-ticker projectors and 80 news projectors in the United States, plus another 200 in Canada.
By the early '60's, 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. The company's fortunes were tied to its old system's two-step process: the information it relied on began with prices from the ticker tape, then a delay was required as the ticker tape shifted away from the print head to a viewing position for projecting or televising. With an electronic ticker display, Trans-Lux could bypass the printing stage, creating a real-time, immediate information system.
In 1965, the company was shocked by the introduction of a new 45 feet (13.7 m)-long electronic display installed on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange by a competitor, Recognition Equipment Inc.(REI), of Dallas, TX. Even though the Ultronic Letrascan electronic wall device had been steadily replacing Trans-Lux tickers for several years, the New York Stock Exchange installation was cause for concern, as Trans-Lux had enjoyed a long-standing business relationship with the exchange. The company made a deal with REI: since Trans-Lux needed Recognition's technology, and they needed Trans-Lux's knowledge of how to market stock-ticker equipment, they formed a joint venture to create a much smaller version of the Recognition system.
Two years later, they announced the Trans-Lux Jet, named for the jets of air that controlled character formation in the sign. 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. U.S. and Canadian brokerage houses ordered more than 1,000 Trans-Lux Jets in the first six months, and Trans-Lux opened an international office in Zurich, Switzerland to deal with overseas orders. By mid-1969, about 3,000 Jets were in use. Shortly after introducing the Jet, Trans-Lux applied the same innovations to closed-circuit television.
The Jet's popularity required Trans-Lux to find a larger production facility. In 1970, the company moved to Norwalk, Connecticut. Demand for Jets continued to grow. Longer versions of 15, 25, and 43 feet (13.1 m) were produced. In 1969, Trans-Lux had succeeded in reducing the size of the Jet to one-fifth of the original. Ten years later, by developing a powerful miniature microprocessor
chip, the company reduced the Jet to one-twenty-fifth of its original size.
As successful as the Jet was, it failed to address one important segment of the stock market: large portfolio holders and active traders had no way to automatically focus on their market objectives and private individual stock holdings. When a Chicago-based company, Quotemaster (later Extel
) developed an experimental prototype
for a selective read-out device, Trans-Lux approached them. The company soon began to develop and then manufacturing the device, now called the Personal Ticker, which could be programmed to monitor up to 40 stocks on a single exchange. By 1969, Trans-Lux began installing the product for private investors, portfolio managers, pension fund administrators, investment advisors, and individual brokers. That same year the strong bull market abruptly ended, drastically impacting installations of all types of Trans-Lux equipment.
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
. Soon Trans-Lux completed sales to many other commodity exchanges, capturing a small but significant new market. When Extel's teleprinter
terminal sales boomed, it contracted Trans-Lux to manufacture keyboards and way-station selectors, which led to Trans-Lux's entry into the teleprinter market. Credidio studied the telex
terminal field and by 1974 Trans-Lux began marketing a telex terminal, the Trans-Lux Teleprinter (TLT), to several industries. More than 700 terminals were installed by 1975.
. 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. The division experienced a growth spurt in 2000 when the Australian Gaming Control Board
approved Trans-Lux's serial slot controller for sale in their country. That decision also boosted sales of the LED jackpot meter displays that work hand in hand with the slot controllers.
Trans-Lux also entered the health care industry with products designed for hospitals, pharmacies, and outpatient clinics by offering critical information displays.
In 2001, the Cincinnati Reds
installed the company's new RainbowRibbon(TM) fascia displays as well as a baseball scoreboard, pitcher's board and out-of-town game board in their new 42,000-seat Great American Ballpark stadium, at an estimated cost of over $3 million. The RainbowRibbon(TM) uses Trans-Lux' unique XFS scaling, which allows precise control of video images and improves image quality at the lower resolutions typical of LED 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 ihas caught the attention of many professional sports teams due to its ability to optimize advertising space on arena and stadium tier fascias. The displays smoothly transition between video, advertising, animations, scoring/statistic layouts, and up to six lines of text around the interior of the facility. The system also featured a 3.5' x 33.5' SpectraLens(TM) pitch count board and a giant 24' x 164' SpectraLens scoreboard, which in 2003, when the park opened, was possibly the largest incandescent scoreboard ever constructed for a professional sports facility to date. The scoreboard, located in the left outfield, is capable of displaying game scores, graphics, animations, player statistics, advertising and general information.
Trans-Lux continued to supply LED/incandescent displays and scoring systems to major and minor league baseball teams, such as the San Francisco Giants
. In addition to professional baseball, Trans-Lux has provided displays and equipment to other professional sports teams, such as the NBA
's Charlotte Hornets
and Detroit Pistons
.
By 2002, annual revenues had reached $70.1 million in three divisions: outdoor displays, indoor displays, and entertainment/real estate. While the company headquarters still remain in Norwalk, manufacturing operations were moved to Stratford, Connecticut in 2008. Trans-Lux now has major U.S. sales and service centers in Norwalk; New York; Atlanta; Chicago
; and Torrance, CA
, in addition to their satellite offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. Subsidiary companies are located in Iowa, Utah, Canada, and Australia. Trans-Lux's International Division maintains a distributor network throughout the world, including most major financial centers as well as in many newly developing countries.
cartoonist Peter Arno
showed a group of upper crust society DAR dowagers and their tuxedo'd escorts proposing to prematurely celebrate what they thought would be a landslide rejection of FDR (considered a "traitor to his class") in November by gleefully suggesting, "Let's go down to the Trans-Lux and hiss Roosevelt!"
Marilyn Monroe
's iconic subway grate scene in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch
takes place as she and co-star Tom Ewell
exit the Trans-Lux 52nd Street Theatre, then located at 586 Lexington Avenue in New York City. They are talking about the film they just watched at the Trans-Lux, Creature from the Black Lagoon
, when Monroe stands on a subway grate and her white dress
is blown above her knees by a subway train passing underneath. The Trans-Lux and the subway grate are clearly visible at the start of the scene, although the final footage of the billowing dress was filmed on a studio set.
Real-time data
Real-time data denotes information that is delivered immediately after collection. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Real-time data is often used for navigation or tracking....
and LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
large-screen electronic information displays, but is primarily known as a major supplier of national stock ticker display devices for stock exchange
Stock exchange
A stock exchange is an entity that provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and...
s. These indoor and outdoor displays are used worldwide in many industries including financial, banking, gaming, corporate, retail, healthcare, sports and transportation.
Early History
The company was created by Percy Norman Furber, an Englishman, who came to the United States in October 1918, after a time spent drilling for oil and miningquicksilver
Cinnabar
Cinnabar or cinnabarite , is the common ore of mercury.-Word origin:The name comes from κινναβαρι , a Greek word most likely applied by Theophrastus to several distinct substances...
in Mexico. Furber was interested in developing a projection system that could be used in a lighted room, and enlisted the aid of a friend, Arthur Payne, a former employee of Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
. Payne hit upon the idea of rear projection; projecting an image through a screen rather than on it. However, this concept required a finer and more translucent material for the screen than any that currently existed.
Moving Light
In 1920, Furber formed American Lux (Latin for "light") Products, and three years later, using a fine high-quality natural silk, it created its first successful screen, with initial sales going mostly to schools and churches. It was only after a visit to the New York Stock ExchangeNew York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
that Furber saw a truly profitable application for rear projection. At the time, brokers
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
obtained the latest stock quotes, provided by Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
's telegraph, or wire service, from a glass dome-topped ticker
Ticker tape
Ticker tape was the earliest digital electronic communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970...
. The machine printed the results onto a long thin piece of paper known as a ticker tape
Ticker tape
Ticker tape was the earliest digital electronic communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970...
, with the brokers closest to the printer having the advantage. Prior to this invention, any stock information was hand-written, usually on a chalk board; although the results were less immediate, they were better displayed. 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. In 1923, the company installed the first "Movie ticker" ticker tape projection system at the New York Stock Exchange. 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.
It is this stock ticker that provided the company's name: "Trans-Lux" meaning "moving light".
Financing this new operation required more capital, so Furber took his company public on August 26, 1925. It was listed on the New York Curb Exchange, which later became the American Stock Exchange
American Stock Exchange
NYSE Amex Equities, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange situated in New York. AMEX was a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known as the New York Curb Exchange. On January 17, 2008, NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the...
. Until being delisted in 2011 Trans-Lux stock was the oldest company to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. In 1925, the company had 41 installations on stock exchange floors and brokerage house boardrooms throughout the country.
Moving Pictures
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. To further penetrate the market, the Trans-Lux Movies Corporation, in partnership with RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Studios, was created. Using Trans-Lux as its trade name, it began a theater-building program. The first Trans-Lux theater at 58th Street and Madison Avenue in New York City was actually converted from retail space, and featured larger seats, more leg room, and wider aisles than the average theater of the day. Seating only 158, it was much too small for the crowd it attracted. The rear projection technology allowed the house lights to remain low so patrons could read their programs and easily locate their seats, and also eliminated the distraction of a beam of light slicing down through the crowd from an overhead projection booth. In accordance with its news "heritage" the theatre featured a program made up exclusively of "shorts" (usually comedy routines or musical numbers) and newsreels. When the company's third theater opened two blocks away on 60th and Madison on November 10, 1933, it was turned back into retail space.In 1931, Percy Furber turned over company operations to his son, Percy. By this time, Trans-Lux had 4,000 stockholders, over 100 employees, and was valued at $2 million. In 1934, the company opened two more newsreel theaters in Brooklyn, NY and one in Philadelphia, PA. Three more locations were added over the next three years, with architect Thomas W. Lamb
Thomas W. Lamb
Thomas White Lamb was an American architect, born in Scotland. He is noted as one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the 20th century.-Career:...
designing the theater in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. 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. Located one block away from the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, it was considered to be the most elegant Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
theater in the capital, up until its untimely demolition in 1975.
In 1937 the company shortened its name to the Trans-Lux Corporation. Along with other theater-related businesses, it initially suffered during the postwar movie slump. Returning veterans were attending college on the GI Bill, marrying, and starting families. Newlyweds and young families with babies were usually on a budget and put the purchase of a home, a car, and new appliances ahead of going to the movies. The company's declining newsreel movie business quickly recovered when it switched to showing first-run feature films in 1949, but weekly theater attendance still experienced a dramatic drop: from 78.2 million in 1946 to 58 million by 1950, when the American public chose to sit at home in front of their new television sets rather than go out to the movies.
As this postwar middle-class began moving from the cities to the suburbs, shopping complexes to support them proliferated, and theaters followed. In 1964 Trans-Lux built its first shopping center theater, an 850-seat facility in Reisterstown Road Plaza
Reisterstown Road Plaza
The Reisterstown Road Plaza, usually known since its inception simply as "The Plaza," is a shopping center and mall located near the Reisterstown Plaza Metro Subway Station...
Mall in Baltimore, MD. By 1969, the company had brought large, modern theaters to five more suburban shopping centers, nearly doubling the size of its theater holdings, and by 1965 had 37 theaters in ten states.
By the end of the 1960s, the theater building boom was over as well. In 1973 Trans-Lux lost money on its theaters for the first time in years. The boom had aggravated the newly independent industry's problem of a shortage of quality movies. Bidding on films became fierce, and many companies split their single theaters into twins. Three screen and four screen theaters began appearing, and when Richard Brandt replaced Percy Furber as chairman of the board in 1974, the multiplex trend (with as many as 12 screens) was in full swing. Some of the company's theaters were split into two and three screen houses, and others were sold off entirely.
In the midst of this, Trans-Lux went into the business of multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
shows. 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. The September 28, 1973 opening of the 45-projector, 16-screen film was called "bedazzling and breathtaking" by The New York Times. "The New York Experience," which was housed in a sub-basement of the McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
Building in Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
, became the longest-running commercial multimedia show in history, until its demise in 1989. Despite its popularity, the show -- which 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
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City but was captured by the British...
-- was forced to close due to escalating rent costs.
By 1981, Trans-Lux's theater holdings were reduced to 28 screens, concentrated in the Northeast, particularly Connecticut.
By the mid 1990s, the theater division invested in building new theaters in the western US, bringing the company's total to 65 screens. In 2000, the firm opened its own Los Angeles-based film booking office.
Television
By 1950, television had become America's most popular form of entertainment. In 1940, there were only 3,785 television sets in the US (and very little to watch in the way of programs). Two decades later, nine out of ten homes had at least one set.Trans-Lux soon began developing specialized rear-projection equipment for television studios, greatly expanded its engineering capacity and started supplying the studios with "Teleprocess" screens and projectors. When closed circuit television
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
(CCTV) appeared in the late '40's, Trans-Lux adapted that technology for viewing stock market information, and formed an electronics division to develop and sell CCTV systems in 1959. They also developed a television program syndication
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
service, and in association with Adventure Cartoon Productions
Adventure Cartoon Productions
Adventure Cartoon Productions was a television production studio that created the cartoon series The Mighty Hercules and Felix the Cat in association with Trans-Lux Television for broadcast from 1963 to 1966. The company worked from the cartoon division of Paramount Pictures, utilizing music...
produced the popular animated childrens' series: Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat (TV series)
Felix the Cat was the first television series featuring the famous cartoon character Felix the Cat.In 1954 Otto Messmer retired from the Felix daily newspaper strips, and his assistant Joe Oriolo took over. Oriolo struck a deal with Felix's new owner to begin a new series of Felix cartoons on...
and The Mighty Hercules
The Mighty Hercules
The Mighty Hercules was an animated series based loosely on the Greek mythological character of Heracles, under his Roman Mythology name, Hercules. It was created in 1962 and then debuted on TV in 1963 and ran until 1966 coinciding with the sword and sandal genre of films popular at the...
. The expanded business required Trans-Lux to move from its Brooklyn headquarters to a larger, five-story building in Long Island City.
In 1967, they commissioned Titra Studios
Titra Studios
Titra Studios is an American dubbing studio. The studio was responsible for dubbing numerous foreign films, including Mothra vs. Godzilla 1964 as well as the Speed Racer cartoon series and the original Ultraman tv series....
, a New York City recording company that provided English translations for foreign movies, to "Americanize" the new Japanese animated series, Speed Racer
Speed Racer
Speed Racer is an English adaptation name of the Japanese manga and anime, which centered on automobile racing. Mach GoGoGo was originally serialized in print form in Shueisha's 1958 Shōnen Book, and was released in tankōbon book form by Sun Wide Comics, re-released in Japan by Fusosha...
, for domestic television. Trans-Lux retained the series until 1969, when it sold off its animated television holdings in order to concentrate on manufacturing illuminated stock market tickers. Trans-Lux's film catalog was purchased by independent distributor Alan Gleitsman, who Alan Enterprises continued to syndicate Speed Racer to independent TV stations throughout the 1970s. That same year the company moved its headquarters again, this time relocating to Norwalk, Connecticut,
Stock Quotes and Signage
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. It also joined forces with the Artkraft StraussArtkraft Strauss
Throughout the twentieth century, Artkraft Strauss, located in Manhattan, New York, was the preeminent designer and creator of Times Square's iconic signs and displays...
Sign Corporation, which was the first signage corporation to first illuminate the "Great White Way" of Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. By 1948 it was supplying electrical traveling message signs to advertisers, radio stations, and publishers throughout the country. At the same time, Trans-Lux had 1,400 stock-ticker projectors and 80 news projectors in the United States, plus another 200 in Canada.
By the early '60's, 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. The company's fortunes were tied to its old system's two-step process: the information it relied on began with prices from the ticker tape, then a delay was required as the ticker tape shifted away from the print head to a viewing position for projecting or televising. With an electronic ticker display, Trans-Lux could bypass the printing stage, creating a real-time, immediate information system.
In 1965, the company was shocked by the introduction of a new 45 feet (13.7 m)-long electronic display installed on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange by a competitor, Recognition Equipment Inc.(REI), of Dallas, TX. Even though the Ultronic Letrascan electronic wall device had been steadily replacing Trans-Lux tickers for several years, the New York Stock Exchange installation was cause for concern, as Trans-Lux had enjoyed a long-standing business relationship with the exchange. The company made a deal with REI: since Trans-Lux needed Recognition's technology, and they needed Trans-Lux's knowledge of how to market stock-ticker equipment, they formed a joint venture to create a much smaller version of the Recognition system.
Two years later, they announced the Trans-Lux Jet, named for the jets of air that controlled character formation in the sign. 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. U.S. and Canadian brokerage houses ordered more than 1,000 Trans-Lux Jets in the first six months, and Trans-Lux opened an international office in Zurich, Switzerland to deal with overseas orders. By mid-1969, about 3,000 Jets were in use. Shortly after introducing the Jet, Trans-Lux applied the same innovations to closed-circuit television.
The Jet's popularity required Trans-Lux to find a larger production facility. In 1970, the company moved to Norwalk, Connecticut. Demand for Jets continued to grow. Longer versions of 15, 25, and 43 feet (13.1 m) were produced. In 1969, Trans-Lux had succeeded in reducing the size of the Jet to one-fifth of the original. Ten years later, by developing a powerful miniature microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
chip, the company reduced the Jet to one-twenty-fifth of its original size.
As successful as the Jet was, it failed to address one important segment of the stock market: large portfolio holders and active traders had no way to automatically focus on their market objectives and private individual stock holdings. When a Chicago-based company, Quotemaster (later Extel
Extel
Extel was founded in 1872 with its initial undertaking being the laying of the first telegraphic cable on the Atlantic seabed to electronically connect London and New York...
) developed an experimental prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
for a selective read-out device, Trans-Lux approached them. The company soon began to develop and then manufacturing the device, now called the Personal Ticker, which could be programmed to monitor up to 40 stocks on a single exchange. By 1969, Trans-Lux began installing the product for private investors, portfolio managers, pension fund administrators, investment advisors, and individual brokers. That same year the strong bull market abruptly ended, drastically impacting installations of all types of Trans-Lux equipment.
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
Chicago Board of Trade
The Chicago Board of Trade , established in 1848, is the world's oldest futures and options exchange. More than 50 different options and futures contracts are traded by over 3,600 CBOT members through open outcry and eTrading. Volumes at the exchange in 2003 were a record breaking 454 million...
. Soon Trans-Lux completed sales to many other commodity exchanges, capturing a small but significant new market. When Extel's teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
terminal sales boomed, it contracted Trans-Lux to manufacture keyboards and way-station selectors, which led to Trans-Lux's entry into the teleprinter market. Credidio studied the telex
Telex
Telex may refer to:* Telex , , a communications network** Teleprinter, the device used on the above network* Telex , a Belgian pop group...
terminal field and by 1974 Trans-Lux began marketing a telex terminal, the Trans-Lux Teleprinter (TLT), to several industries. More than 700 terminals were installed by 1975.
Diversification
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 company's capacity to produce electronic displays increased in 2000 when it opened a modern outdoor display manufacturing facility in UtahUtah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
. 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. The division experienced a growth spurt in 2000 when the Australian Gaming Control Board
Gaming Control Board
A gaming control board , also called by various names including gambling control board, casino control board, gambling board, and gaming commission) is a government agency charged with regulating casino and other types of gaming in a defined geographical area, usually a state, and of enforcing...
approved Trans-Lux's serial slot controller for sale in their country. That decision also boosted sales of the LED jackpot meter displays that work hand in hand with the slot controllers.
Trans-Lux also entered the health care industry with products designed for hospitals, pharmacies, and outpatient clinics by offering critical information displays.
In 2001, the Cincinnati Reds
Cincinnati Reds
The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are members of the National League Central Division. The club was established in 1882 as a charter member of the American Association and joined the National League in 1890....
installed the company's new RainbowRibbon(TM) fascia displays as well as a baseball scoreboard, pitcher's board and out-of-town game board in their new 42,000-seat Great American Ballpark stadium, at an estimated cost of over $3 million. The RainbowRibbon(TM) uses Trans-Lux' unique XFS scaling, which allows precise control of video images and improves image quality at the lower resolutions typical of LED 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 ihas caught the attention of many professional sports teams due to its ability to optimize advertising space on arena and stadium tier fascias. The displays smoothly transition between video, advertising, animations, scoring/statistic layouts, and up to six lines of text around the interior of the facility. The system also featured a 3.5' x 33.5' SpectraLens(TM) pitch count board and a giant 24' x 164' SpectraLens scoreboard, which in 2003, when the park opened, was possibly the largest incandescent scoreboard ever constructed for a professional sports facility to date. The scoreboard, located in the left outfield, is capable of displaying game scores, graphics, animations, player statistics, advertising and general information.
Trans-Lux continued to supply LED/incandescent displays and scoring systems to major and minor league baseball teams, such as the San Francisco Giants
San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
. In addition to professional baseball, Trans-Lux has provided displays and equipment to other professional sports teams, such as the NBA
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
's Charlotte Hornets
Charlotte Hornets
Charlotte Hornets may refer to several sports teams based in Charlotte, North Carolina:* Charlotte Hornets , a professional basketball team that was based in Charlotte, North Carolina...
and Detroit Pistons
Detroit Pistons
The Detroit Pistons are a franchise of the National Basketball Association based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The team's home arena is The Palace of Auburn Hills. It was originally founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the Fort Wayne Pistons as a member of the National Basketball League in 1941, where...
.
By 2002, annual revenues had reached $70.1 million in three divisions: outdoor displays, indoor displays, and entertainment/real estate. While the company headquarters still remain in Norwalk, manufacturing operations were moved to Stratford, Connecticut in 2008. Trans-Lux now has major U.S. sales and service centers in Norwalk; New York; Atlanta; Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
; and Torrance, CA
Torrance, California
Torrance is a city incorporated in 1921 and located in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Torrance has of shore-front beaches on the Pacific Ocean, quieter and less well-known by tourists than others on the Santa Monica Bay, such as those of neighboring...
, in addition to their satellite offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. Subsidiary companies are located in Iowa, Utah, Canada, and Australia. Trans-Lux's International Division maintains a distributor network throughout the world, including most major financial centers as well as in many newly developing countries.
Company divisions
Trans-Lux also has one subsidiary:- Fair Play ScoreboardsFair Play ScoreboardsFair Play is a company that manufactures scoreboards, video boards, and electronic displays. Fair Play is a subsidiary of Trans-Lux electronic displays.-History:...
, a scoreboard and sports equipment manufacturer.
Trivia
"Trans Lux" was well-known as a newsreel theater to the general public of the 1930's. In September 1936, New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
cartoonist Peter Arno
Peter Arno
Peter Arno was a U.S. cartoonist.-Biography:Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr. in New York, New York, and educated at the Hotchkiss School and Yale University, his cartoons were published in The New Yorker from 1925–1968. They often depicted a cross-section of New York society from the 1920s through...
showed a group of upper crust society DAR dowagers and their tuxedo'd escorts proposing to prematurely celebrate what they thought would be a landslide rejection of FDR (considered a "traitor to his class") in November by gleefully suggesting, "Let's go down to the Trans-Lux and hiss Roosevelt!"
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
's iconic subway grate scene in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch is a 1955 American film based on a three-act play with the same name by George Axelrod. The film was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, and starred Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, reprising his Broadway role...
takes place as she and co-star Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell was an American actor.-Early life and career:Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, where his family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers....
exit the Trans-Lux 52nd Street Theatre, then located at 586 Lexington Avenue in New York City. They are talking about the film they just watched at the Trans-Lux, Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes...
, when Monroe stands on a subway grate and her white dress
White dress of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe wore a white dress in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder. The dress was created by costume designer William Travilla and was worn in one of the best-known scenes in the movie...
is blown above her knees by a subway train passing underneath. The Trans-Lux and the subway grate are clearly visible at the start of the scene, although the final footage of the billowing dress was filmed on a studio set.
