In common with many other companies in the entertainment industry, Bytecraft owes its existence to dear old Strand Electric. During Strand’s sojourn as part of the Rank organization, it operated in Australia as part of Rank Electronics, a company that manufactured and marketed everything from telecine chains and stage machinery to consumer electronics and language laboratories. Amongst other projects, Rank Electronics had won the contracts to supply the stage lifts and wagons, lighting and audio to the Victorian Arts Centre (VAC), in Melbourne. The project was in the process of completion and handover in early 1984, when that well-muscled chap with the big gong decided to dispose of many parts of the organization, including the theatrical equipment division.
As the new owners were not interested in purchasing the warranty and maintenance part of the project, Rank contracted their VAC project manager, Ted Fregon, to take on the task. Fregon, an electronics engineer who had originally been hired as the project engineer for the VAC stage machinery, undertook this work through his one-person company, Fregon Systems. He then hired two other former Rank Electronics employees: audio service technician Peter Bay and stage machinery technician Joe Krnjak. To service the lighting facilities he contracted the one-person company, Data In Data Out, run by yet another former Rank Electronics service technician, Stephen Found.
Almost as soon as the VAC opened for business, shortcomings began to reveal themselves, most noticeably the scarcity of dimmer channels and the flexibility of the electrically-powered flying system. Designed just before the wide acceptance of the concept of dimmer-per-circuit, the theatres were facing major problems with repertory turnaround due to the time required for lighting repatches. Alan Siggers, lighting master at the VAC, approached Fregon and Found to see if they could develop a dimmer for the centre’s specific requirements. Thus, in late 1984, the duo formed Bytecraft (a name they arrived at while driving back from a service call in the country) and accepted an order, for delivery in early 1985, of over 800 channels of a dimmer that did not yet exist.
Christmas 1984 saw Ted Fregon designing his first dimmer, the Intelligent Dimmer System (IDS) - probably the first dimmer ever made with full fault reporting. The IDS supervisor module monitored thyristor health, mains supply, control signal presence, circuit breaker status and lamp status. The status of all dimmers was displayed on a screen in the lighting control room. 17 years later, those dimmers are still toiling away, almost invisible due to their reliability.
The IDS went on to become the dimmer of choice for virtually every major performing arts and production facility in Australia. In 1986, over 1,000 channels of an extreme-reliability version of the dimmer, the IDS Ultra, were supplied to the Sydney Opera House to replace its ageing Siemens system. The IDS formed the basis of a range of control products that have seen more than 8,000 channels supplied to venues throughout Asia, Europe and Australasia.
When Brisbane hosted Expo 88, Bytecraft won contracts to supply lighting control for the expo park and the main public stage area. To meet this requirement they produced a portable/temporary dimmer suitable for use in both architectural and stage applications. The ground-breaking Bytesize dimmer developed for this project was probably the world’s first all-digital dimmer; certainly the first to feature an LCD screen and menu system for configuration and fault reporting. Its compactness, low acoustic noise, high rise time, fade curve s
