
Electronic Theatre Controls / ETC
ETC Microvision (1990)
Sadly the very first ETC console, inspired by the Q-File, built in a bedroom at the Foster brothers’ parents’ house in 1975, and called MegaCue, no longer exists. But it proved what was possible and launched the company, though for the first few years ETC didn’t sell consoles under its own name, instead creating Channel Track for Colortran and custom consoles – nicknamed ‘MickeyTrack’ – for Disney.
In 1982, ETC did launch a console under its own name; that product, ELC, would evolve into Concept and then a family of consoles: Idea, Vision, Express, Expression and the ‘baby’ of the range shown here, MicroVision.
You may recognise the distinctive stone wheel but not the name: at first ETC licensed their consoles to Arri for Europe; Arri’s version of this console was called Mirage, alongside the larger Image and Imagine models.
Under the hood, they all ran variations of the same code, written and maintained by the same small team of people throughout its long life.