June 3, 1983, Hollywood: The movie “WarGames” was released. My good friend, Harvey Warnke, created these huge display screens that you see in the movie, just as you see them in this famous scene from the film.
That was 40 years ago. He actually created these huge displays with dozens of slide projectors, projecting from behind the set, triggering them remotely, because computers at the time were small and primitive and couldn’t then do such effects that we now take for granted. He was so creative.
If you never saw “WarGames,” it’s pretty interesting. Click here for a recent news article about the movie.
Self-Taught
Harvey initially learned tech and how to design things with circui-board chips when he was working in a planetarium, all self-taught.
He graduated to light-shows in San Francisco, back in the day, and then went on to silicon-valley jobs, and toward the end of his life did a stint working in Hollywood, creatingeffects such as these huge screens. He also contributed a recording of his cat, which was used in the “Body Snatchers” revival.
San Francisco Days
In my San Francisco days, he and I were pals, and at one point we worked together on two projects.
- He designed circuit boards for my project which linked Pacific Bell’s incoming calls to display screens used by my answering service operators.
. - And I wrote the software for his film-editing-table footage-counter device designed for editing movie film, back when you had to count feet and frames of film, and splice things with a razor blade.
He was an amazing guy. All these years later, I still miss him.
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