Dates: July 24 1912 – ?
From ‘The Strand Century’
George Izenour was an author, educator, designer, and creator of the first electronic theatre lighting dimming system, and, throughout his career, he invented and developed multiple technologies at the core of modern theatrical productions.
Izenour was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, on July 24, 1912 and attended Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, where he obtained a master’s degree in physics. His thesis explored what would later become the first electronic theatre lighting dimming system.
In July 1939, Izenour joined Yale University with the mandate to establish a laboratory dedicated to the advancement of theatre technology. There he developed the Electro-Mechanical Laboratory under the direction of Stanley McCandless. He built and installed several dimming systems, one of which Century Lighting became interested in; Century Lighting was acquired by Rank Strand Electric in 1969, thus solidifying Strand and Izenour’s connection for years to come. However, Izenour did not wish to sell the patents he had acquired, and Century took a license to produce the dimming systems that would be known as the Century-Izenour System while Izenour remained as a consultant with the company. “He was a very smart man,” says Nathan ‘Sonny’ Sonnenfeld, the lighting industry veteran who sold architectural lighting for Century from 1945 to 1961. “That was the beginning of the CI system, and we sold a lot of them.” The Century-Izenour control system allowed a single operator, located in the house, to control all of the stage lighting remotely. Strand would eventually acquire Century Lighting and its technology along with it, but at the time, the acquisition motivated the research and development department at Strand. Bentham says in his autobiography, “Strand simply had to have an electronic valve system to challenge George Izenour’s, by now taken up by Century Lighting in New York, and that meant for the middle range, the majority of first-class installations, the customer would have the choice of a preset type of control.”
Through his consultancy firm, George C. Izenour Associates, Izenour went on to advise clients such as the Metropolitan Opera Company and the Juillard School of Music on technical matters as well as designing more than 100 theatres across the country. However, his concept of ‘democratic seating,’ in which the audience is placed along and extra-wide stage, has fallen out of favor among most contemporary theatre consultants.