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A Technical Description of the Control Room
by Elsa Garmire

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Bank of tape recorders in the control room.

CONTROL ROOM

 

The E.A.T. Control Room is located underneath the floor. The heart of the functions provided there is the Master Programmer.  This is an 82-channel punch paper tape machine with a variable speed rate.  Each channel opens or closes a relay, of a make before break sort.  That means that the first paper hole turns on a function and the next one turns it off.  The Master Programmer switches the 16 audio system and 12 loop system tape recorders, 13 hand-set light signals.  It runs the input programming to the audio system with 32 channels; that is, the two 4x4 matrix switches.  It controls two tape recorders for the interior lights and switches the light programmer on and off.  Each of the 82 switches can also be controlled manually from the E.A.T. console located on the Pavilion floor.  The light programmer described in Section J is also in the Control Room.

 

Information about the crowds waiting outside is monitored by closed circuit TV in the Control Room.  The camera is placed at the start of the entrance tunnel with a pan and tilt motion operable from the Control Room.

 

Information about the number of visitors inside the Pavilion is obtained by counting the people coming in and subtracting the people leaving.  This information is necessary since each visitor to the Pavilion is encouraged to remain as long as he likes and the Pavilion must not become overly crowded.  Monitoring of the number of people inside the Pavilion provides information for the hostesses whether or not to let people in. Four tape mats placed across the entrance tunnel contain a mesh grid which changes resistance when stepped upon.  These count people entering and a similar system placed at the exits counts those leaving.  This information is displayed on the E.A.T. console and also fed into a dual-channel graph as a function of time.

 

Graphs of the number of people in the Pavilion as a function of the time of day, establish traffic flow patterns that aid in the scheduling of programs.

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