Question about the original 11' USS Enterprise

Been on a bit of a Star Trek jag recently, and I get the impression that it's generally believed that at least some of the bulbs in the nacelle domes blinked on and off. I don't see how that could be the case. Does anybody have any evidence?

?? Really...? I've never heard anyone say that they blinked. Simple rotation of a platform of vanes with XMas lights and mirror fragments. Low tech and effective.

That's what I think, too (specifically, according to the book published by Richard Datin's son and daughter, the "platforms of vanes" were spun aluminium domes which he had made by Crescent Metals, into which he cut a series of slots). Most of the lighting kits which you can buy for models of the Enterprise incorporate blinking LEDs, which I presume more accurately reproduces the flickering effect which was caused by filming the original device, but the impression I get is that most people seem to think that the original miniature worked this way too. Most people seem to think that there were five non-blinking amber C7 bulbs as well as the Christmas lights. This detail is even represented on the Polar Lights 1:350 kit:



I don't think this is the case, either.

Would be interesting to find out one way or another... suppose the restoration folks could speak to the nature of the rotating inserts, and whether the apparent blinking was, in fact, blinking, or an artifact of tv fx 50+ years ago. I think the choice may have been to shift the cooler lights on/off and allow the amber and warmer to persist? That seems to jive with what I recall of the look.

there are blinkers, and some don't blink, along with the rotation and mirrors that create the effect.

With respect, that hardly constitutes "evidence".
Here's a picture of the model when it was originally donated to the Smithsonian Institute:


All electrical connections to the starboard nacelle are achieved via the plug that can be seen hanging down, which allows for two circuits - one for the motor and one for the lights.

With only one electrical connection, how could some of the lights have blinked while others stayed lit?

There are certainly blinking lights in the nacelle along with others that don't blink. Watching the miniature on screen; it is pretty evident.

Miniaturizer Ray said:

With only one electrical connection, how could some of the lights have blinked while others stayed lit?

Click to expand...

A pair of leads attached in parallel to the same power connector. One +/- pair of leads for the blinkies, one for the non-. It isn't the power source being turned on and off that causes the blinking, it's a circuit along the line.

The blinking is MUCH slower than the effect caused by the blades.

The rotating blades gave a shimmering effect, and gave the lights an impression of motion in some shots (I used to swear some of the lights were mounted to a rotating disc). This effect alone would be too regular, the random blinkers give a more uneven pulsating look.

Again, with respect, gentlemen, do you have any evidence?

This Starlog article by Jeff Szazly goes into some detail about how they replaced the Christmas tree lights in the starboard nacelle when the model was loaned to Golden West college. If you read the article carefully, the description isn't really compatible with the idea that the lights were on more than one circuit.

In the Datins' book, this appears to be quoted directly from Richard Datin himself (although there's no reference to who he was originally talking or writing to):

"I purchased two, 7 inch Plexiglass domes at a cost of $15.00 and had them finely sandblasted by Abrasive Art to be translucent for another $2.50. Then I contracted with Crescent Metals, a metal spinning firm to have two domes-shaped metal spinnings or shells made for a diameter slightly less than the inside diameter of the Plexiglass domes. The metal was most likely aluminum. Two flat disks were fabricated to which a set of miniature Christmas tree-type lights were attached. I believe the bulbs were white or clear, (at a later date Craig Thompson spoke of multicolored Christmas lights in each dome, I do recall seeing it on the third year's episodes herein it seemed that the light source behind the nacelle domes were multicolored. To me it seemed 'cheesy')."

"On the spinnings, I cut a series of slots radiating from the dome's center. Each dome was powered by a heavy duty commercial type display motor embedded under the disk (which rotated in opposite directions) inside the nacelle pod and when powered, achieved the 'spinning lights' effect under the frosted but translucent, Plexiglass surface. The lights remained stationary while an off-camera stage technician controlled the speed of the rotating slotted dome to simulate whatever amount of energy needed to illustrate the degree of warp power Roddenberry sought, as well as the intensity of the lights controlled by a transformer and rheostat similar to a lamp dimmer switch".


I've been quite careful to check that I've quoted this text exactly verbatim, with the exception of making Craig Thompson's name a hotlink. One would think, given this detailed description, that if the lights were designed to blink, Mr Datin would have mentioned it. Obviously, he's mistaken in his belief that the lights were only multicoloured in the third season (perhaps he bought a new TV set in 1968?), but if it is true that the lights that he installed were clear or white, then they must have been replaced by somebody, just as Jeff Szazly later replaced them at Golden West. Look at this picture:
View attachment 802613

To replace the lights, you just take a fresh string of Christmas tree lights, wrap them around the tape covered pins, and connect them to the (only two!) wires.

Treadwell said:

The blinking is MUCH slower than the effect caused by the blades.

Click to expand...

Consider:

The apparent rotational speed of the vanes depends on the speed that the camera is running at (see the Wagon Wheel effect).
The speed that the vanes rotated was variable. The vanes may not have all been equally spaced (see below). If the model, the camera, or both are in motion, then the angle around the shaft that corresponds to a vane obscuring a particular light from the camera lens will change. All of this could give rise to an apparent blink rate which might seem entirely divorced from the rotational effect of the vanes.

Bear in mind that we don't really know what the aluminium spinnings looked like. The dark areas that we see "through" the nacelle domes may not actually be the vanes themselves, but rather the shadows cast by the vanes (even when the internal lights are off, which it looks as though they might be in three of the Golden West pictures, a certain amount of ambient light would still enter the domes and reflect off the mirror shards, casting shadows from the vanes back onto the domes.

Here's a video that Doug Drexler made for the restoration team to study. It doesn't feature every single shot of the Enterprise, but it's a good start. It's surprisingly difficult to even count how exactly how many vanes there were. Pick any ninety degree segment, and it almost always appears to be divided into three wedges by the vanes, giving an obvious answer of twelve. But are you sure that you were actually looking at ninety degrees? I suspect that there may actually be thirteen, and there's a discernible variation in the angles between them.

Again, if you watch the show, it it obvious that some of the bulbs blink and it is also obvious that the 12 vanes are for the most part evenly spaced (except for one). I will post some photos showing as much later when I get home.


The bulbs themselves blink but maintain the circuit. When the element of the bulb gets hot, it disconnects from the lead on the light only but the power sill flows through the bulb, just not the lighted part. The old Christmas tree string lights would have blinking bulbs in them that would all randomly blinked at different times and one did not effect the other because the circuit was sill maintained; this is similar to what they used on the miniature. The circuit was not interrupted by the blinking of the lights so the wiring on the miniature makes sense.

@ Miniaturizer Ray…your attachment link doesn’t work.

Mark

Darth Humorous said:

@ Miniaturizer Ray…your attachment link doesn’t work.

Mark

Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I've been using Internet forums for twenty years, but trying to get links to work properly on this one has gotten the better of me. It never used to be this glitchy. From now on, I'm just going to type the URLs; you might have to copy and paste them. Sometimes the BBCode parser makes them hotlinks and sometimes it doesn't. The link was to this picture:

https://i.imgur.com/dZRKUlq.jpg

feek61 said:

Again, if you watch the show, it it obvious that some of the bulbs blink and it is also obvious that the 12 vanes are for the most part evenly spaced (except for one). I will post some photos showing as much later when I get home.


The bulbs themselves blink but maintain the circuit. When the element of the bulb gets hot, it disconnects from the lead on the light only but the power sill flows through the bulb, just not the lighted part. The old Christmas tree string lights would have blinking bulbs in them that would all randomly blinked at different times and one did not effect the other because the circuit was sill maintained; this is similar to what they used on the miniature. The circuit was not interrupted by the blinking of the lights so the wiring on the miniature makes sense.

Click to expand...

Is there something in particular that can be gleaned from watching the show that can't be gleaned from watching Doug Drexler's video? I have the first two seasons on Blu-ray, which is fine for just watching an episode but for study on a computer, they're a pain in the neck.

I'd very much like to see the photos, please! I will concede that, having stabilized and studied Doug Drexler's video - specifically the first "season two" clip - I'm back to believing that there were 12 slots (but I'm also forming the opinion that they were indeed slots; I think that there was a lot more metal and a lot less open space than one would suppose.

Are you sure about the Christmas tree lights? I'm from the UK, I was born in 1964, and I have a diploma in Electrical Engineering. In the 1960s, our Christmas tree lights were always wired in series. Usually there were 50 15W 5V bulbs (our domestic power supply is 240V 50Hz). If a bulb blew, they all went out. If a bulb worked loose, they all went out. It used to be part of the annual Christmas ritual to work your way through the bulbs and find the one that had mysteriously come unscrewed while they'd been stored away. In the 1970s (maybe late '60s) new lights came on the market that would work even if one of the bulbs blew. They had very fine wires (called "shunts") wrapped around the base of the filament, dipped in an insulating material. Ordinarily, most of the currrent would flow through the bulb filament, but if the filament burned out, the current would flow through the shunt wire, heating it up, burn off the insulation, and the shunt would effectively become a wire link, allowing the rest of the bulbs to work. Your description sounds a bit like this, but this is a one time operation.

I'm not saying that you couldn't get lights that work the way that you describe in the US, but I haven't been able to find any reference to them, and I think that it's possible that whoever provided you with the information may have misunderstood the way that shunt bulbs work.


Side note: I'm still having a hell of a time just getting a post up that remotely resembles what I actually typed in. I've tried it on three different computers. What am I missing?

FWIW, I was born in the mid 1950’s in the U.S., and the Xmas lights commonly available for decades were usually fitted into dark green colored, parallel-wired string harnesses. The bulbs were of two different sizes, one with a candelabra base, and one with a standard base, the standard base bulb being the larger. Both styles of bulb were shaped similarly, and the wire harnesses were available for one or the other sizes. In either harness, if a bulb went out, the remaining lights stayed on. There were no shunts in these bulbs. In fact, these bulbs are still available today. I recall seeing various of these bulbs flashing in store window displays during the Xmas season. Many folks still use these bulbs in either size to decorate their house exteriors so that they may be seen from a distance because they are larger than the tiny, newer style bulbs with the shunts whose harnesses are wired in series.

Mark

Miniaturizer Ray said:

Tell me about it. I've been using Internet forums for twenty years, but trying to get links to work properly on this one has gotten the better of me. It never used to be this glitchy. From now on, I'm just going to type the URLs; you might have to copy and paste them. Sometimes the BBCode parser makes them hotlinks and sometimes it doesn't. The link was to this picture:

https://i.imgur.com/dZRKUlq.jpg



Is there something in particular that can be gleaned from watching the show that can't be gleaned from watching Doug Drexler's video? I have the first two seasons on Blu-ray, which is fine for just watching an episode but for study on a computer, they're a pain in the neck.

I'd very much like to see the photos, please! I will concede that, having stabilized and studied Doug Drexler's video - specifically the first "season two" clip - I'm back to believing that there were 12 slots (but I'm also forming the opinion that they were indeed slots; I think that there was a lot more metal and a lot less open space than one would suppose.

Are you sure about the Christmas tree lights? I'm from the UK, I was born in 1964, and I have a diploma in Electrical Engineering. In the 1960s, our Christmas tree lights were always wired in series. Usually there were 50 15W 5V bulbs (our domestic power supply is 240V 50Hz). If a bulb blew, they all went out. If a bulb worked loose, they all went out. It used to be part of the annual Christmas ritual to work your way through the bulbs and find the one that had mysteriously come unscrewed while they'd been stored away. In the 1970s (maybe late '60s) new lights came on the market that would work even if one of the bulbs blew. They had very fine wires (called "shunts") wrapped around the base of the filament, dipped in an insulating material. Ordinarily, most of the currrent would flow through the bulb filament, but if the filament burned out, the current would flow through the shunt wire, heating it up, burn off the insulation, and the shunt would effectively become a wire link, allowing the rest of the bulbs to work. Your description sounds a bit like this, but this is a one time operation.

I'm not saying that you couldn't get lights that work the way that you describe in the US, but I haven't been able to find any reference to them, and I think that it's possible that whoever provided you with the information may have misunderstood the way that shunt bulbs work.


Side note: I'm still having a hell of a time just getting a post up that remotely resembles what I actually typed in. I've tried it on three different computers. What am I missing?

Click to expand...

Yes, much can be learned by going frame-by-frame and watching the nacelle lighting which is why I recommended it. You would be wrong if you believe there were only small slots between the fan blades. (well, I guess it depends on how big you consider a slot, lol); the blades were very thin at the front but tapered out a little as they went to the back of the sphere. The fan blades were never bigger than the open space. I am sure about the Christmas lights, I saw them every year for well over a decade; I will try to find some documentation on that since it was obviously different in the U.K. Here is a screen cap from the second season episode "Metamorphosis" clearly showing the fan blades and the size relative to the open slots; clearly much smaller than the slots.






Here is the last known photograph from 1972 of the miniature with the original nacelle's intact. Even though the nacelles are not lit; you can clearly see how thin the blades were:



The 2015-2016 restoration team went to great lengths to get the model as perfect as possible. They have 12 thin vanes which matches the original model.



The effect of the lights, blinking lights, turning fan blades, broken mirrors, stage lighting (creating shadows from the fan blades) and the effect of the individual film frames creating a strobe effect gave us an amazing visual representation of what was suppose to be great power. To me, it was very effective.


Here is a quick .GIF clearly showing the lights flashing. I have tried to align the blades of the spinning fan so that they would be close to matching up (difficult because the spacing of the fan blades changes due to them bending has they turn). Even though it is not perfect you can see the top right light and several on the RH side are on in one frame and off in another. The same is true on the LH side.

Feek, thanks very much for those. I'll dig out the Blu-ray and have a look at Metamorphosis. Any other first or second series episodes that feature good shots that aren't in Doug Drexler's video? (from the look of the still you posted, it seems much clearer than any of the clips he selected. I wonder why he missed it?)

The Golden West pictures are the main fly in the ointment to the "slot" theory. If the lights are off and the motors aren't running then it's dead in the water. As I mentioned in post #10, though, if the lights were off, there would still be ambient light reflected from the mirrors to cast shadows of the "vanes" onto the sandblasted outer domes.

I'm trying to think of a common example of how narrow slots cut into a solid dome would give the appearance of wide gaps separated by narrow vanes when the dome is spun in front of a light source, and I haven't come up with anything. To get the crisp edges of the "vanes" you need to film or photograph it to achieve a definite shutter period. Even if I rigged something up and videoed it, it wouldn't look right, because all of the cameras that I have now have CMOS sensors, which do this:

https://www.diyphotography.net/this-video-helps-you-understand-the-rolling-shutter-effect/

I'm going to try and make some CGI renders to show my theory. I have five different rendering engines which each have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to simulating real world lighting, but I'm well out of my comfort zone with that - I have an arsenal of tricks for making images look real without incurring the computational costs of physical accuracy but here I'll be doing the opposite. I've done a few tests, and that stuff takes a long time to render. Please keep posting to this thread; if I don't reply, it's because I'm waiting for a render to finish...

Another point that I noticed in the Jeff Szazly article that I linked to is that he specifically describes the inner domes as being clear hemispheres bisected by black lines. To me, that doesn't sound like a different way of describing the aluminium spinnings that Richard Datin had made, that sounds like something different. Maybe somebody replaced Mr Datin's spinnings as well as the clear or white bulbs that he remembers installing. Hmmm...

I always thought the fans were clear domes with black lines on them but after watching them spin, frame-by-frame you can actually see the spacing change between the fan blades like they are bending as they spin. The only way that would happen is if they were thin pieces of something (cut aluminum dome just as Datin described) that slightly bend as the dome spun. There is no questions the spacing between the fan blades slightly changes as it rotates.

Okay - I found some information about the blinking Christmas bulbs. Apparently it was a pretty common thing in the US.

You have a special bulb with a red tip containing a bi-metallic strip, and if you put it in a string of lights, all of the lights further down the string blink with it, is that right?

I still can't figure out exactly how that's wired up according to the various descriptions that I've read, but I'm willing to accept that it's a thing. How is it wired up?

So, in the Enterprise nacelles, you have twenty Christmas tree lights, some of which stay lit, and some of which blink on and off in unison, is that right? The number that blink depends on where the red tip bulb is located along the string, yes? Presumably, you can't put another red bulb further down the string to make some of the lights blink off even more, because the bimetallic strip wouldn't have a chance to get hot enough before the previous red bulb broke the circuit.

You are not reading about the correct bulbs. The red-tipped bulbs are the smaller lights. If you put the red-tipped light in a normal strand of lights: yes, the rest of the strand would blink. Typically however, those strands are wired with 3 conductor wire so that there is always current going to all of the lights so the blinking does not effect the others. The Enterprise miniature used the C7 twinkle lights if I am remembering correctly. The C7 strands only had two conductors. The blinking lights in the nacelles did NOT blink in unison; they blinked randomly. One light flashing had no relationship to the other flashing lights; it depended on how long it took for each individual light to heat up. This blinking light randomness was common in TOS; another example is the type 4B computers.

They said after the last restoration was done that (members of the restoration team) that the C-7 bulbs were not the bulbs used in the nacelles. It was likely they used the new thin tube like "Merry Miniatures" that were new to the market in 1962. If you use C-7 bulbs you would have space problems. If the bulbs were cut from a strand then placed in the back plate and then wired together quickly they would end up as a parallel circuit allowing both flashing and always on bulbs.

The bulbs were 3v which would explain the need for the transformer.