Lekolite
Encyclopedia
Stage lighting
Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting. Stage lighting has grown considerably in recent years...
. Introduced in 1933 http://www.northern.edu/wild/LiteDes/ldhist.htm, it was developed by Century lighting which eventually became a part of the Strand Lighting
Strand Lighting
Strand Lighting is an international theatre and television lighting company founded in 1914 in London's West End that supplies lighting fixtures and controls for the entertainment industry. Strand's products have been used on countless theatre productions and TV shows worldwide.-History:Strand...
Corporation. The instrument was widely used in theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and entertainment venues into the 80s and 90s, particularly in the USA, and modern fixtures, such as the Electronic Theatre Controls Source 4, are direct descendants of Levy and Kook's design.
Century Lighting founders and the instrument's inventors, Joseph Levy and Edward Kook, combined the first two letters of their own last names and called the unit "Leko." Rival lighting company, Kliegl Brothers, released their own Elipsoidial Reflector Spotlight that same year, calling it "Klieglight". It is unclear which company was first to develop the new technology, but both had developed the technology earlier and had to wait until a lamp was developed by GE that would work in the new fixture. The Leko nickname became widely used to refer to any ERS. Strand lighting has begun to use the 'Lekolite' name again.