56 Drive-In

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Uploaded on: July 27, 2020

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Photo & description credit Wade Peebles.

“ME and TOMMY BELLAMY SR. in the projection room of the Hi-Way 56 Drive-IN Theater, in Swainsboro. Not a great picture of me with a cigarette in my mouth, but I was young and dumb. That was taken around 1980. The old Federal Mogul arc carbon projectors were ca. 1948 or so, Tony Bellamy can and will correct me if I am wrong. There were two projectors and each were used to switch back and forth to show reel after reel for seamless viewing. The projectors did not have light bulbs in them, they burned carbon in copper jacketed rods. They were connected to positive and negative electrical terminals, and the voltage caused them to burn and produce an arc light, like that of welding rods. The stove pipe flues were for the removal of the smoke generated by the burning rods. The rods were fed together by an electrical feed system that required adjustments by the red knobs on the sides of the lamp houses.There were concave mirror reflectors inside the radiused piece with the hinges on the back of the lamphouse which "threw” the light through the film which ran through the projector at the front of the machines. The sound was picked up from the film from a strip on the edge of the film, by means of an optical reader, which was put into use with the first talkies in the 1930s. It was an amazing process that we took for granted. Good times “running the show”."