Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: General Electric P9000

This is topic General Electric P9000 in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005820

Posted by Jonathan Worthing (Member # 803) on 02-04-2004, 08:16 AM:

Has anyone seen a General Electric P9000 projector.

A guy rang me & asked if we had a manual for one.

He had picked it up from a privet collector.

I asked him if it was 35 or 70 mm, but he did not know as he had not seen a projector before ( You can see where this conversation was going.)

After asking him a few questions he told me that there was a lead coming from it which had

VGA stamped on it.

It was in a flight case 1 M x 1.5 M x 80 cm

Sounds like a old monster to me but who knows

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-04-2004, 06:30 PM:

I believe the P9000 is a GE Talaria light valve projector. These are touchy beasts to say the least but are capable of large, bright projected images with awful colorimetry assuming it is a color model...there were B&W versions too capsble of very high resolution. It would certainly be nice to know that one has survived for a museum piece! The forunner to the GE was the Ediphor which was one of the most amazing video projectors ever devised. Both had similar workings except the color GE's did color decoding/scanning an entirely different way than Ediphor.
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 02-04-2004, 08:06 PM:

The name of the Beast is "Eidophor", and more can be found here:

http://www.cinephoto.co.uk/eidophor.htm

http://pyanczer.home.mindspring.com/Tour/eidophor.html

Here's a picture of an Eidophor machine at the London Odean Leicester Square:

http://www.cinephoto.co.uk/eidophor_3.htm

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-10-2004, 07:55 PM:

In the early 1990's, the Rochester section SMPTE had a tour of the General Electric plant near Syracuse NY, and a presentation and demo of the Talaria projector. Dr. William Glenn was one of the key inventors. General Electric is gone now, and Lockheed Martin does defense work at the plant. I seem to recall the demo had tiny "bubbles" occasionally floating through the image.

Here's a tutorial "white paper" on electronic projection technology by Texas Instruments:

http://www-en.enseeiht.fr/enseigne/tsi/tvnum/display/titj03.pdf

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-10-2004, 07:58 PM:

John,

The employes that ran the G.E. Talaria division bought it from G.E. and ran it for some time but I don't know if it is still in operation or not. The bubbles were in the oil film that circulated over the target that the electron beam scanned...similar but not exactly like the Ediphor Projector.

Mark