A pair of high intensity carbon arc movie projectors, dating back to the 1930s, have been cleaned, reassembled and reinstalled in the projection booth in the Calumet Theatre. The newly restored projection booth is now part of the theatre tours. (Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette)

CALUMET — Among ongoing projects to restore the Calumet Theatre to is early grandeur, the project of restoring the projector room, or projection booth, is now complete. A major component of the project was restoring and reinstalling the twin carbon arc projectors.

Theater Director Nathan Jones said the project, which took several months, was recently finished.

Like most projection booths, this one has two movie projectors, which Jones said are identical.

“In fact,” he said, “they’re only one serial number apart.”

The twin projectors are Peerless Magnarc high-intensity carbon arc lamps, produced for 35mm projectors. They were manufactured by the J.E. McAuley Manufacturing Co. of Chicago.

The website Mulberry Wing reports that an extremely bright arc was created by passing a large DC current between two carbon rods, and the rods were consumed in the process. Since rods typically lasted 30 to 40 minutes, they needed to be replaced multiple times during the showing of a film. This required switching between two projectors, and so the burn time of the rod determined the maximum length of a movie reel.

Theater Program Director Reese White said movies were first shown in 1887, not in the theater but in the community hall, which is now called the Calumet Theatre Ballroom. That was a year after the Village Hall was constructed, some 13 years before the theater was built.

“The first talkies, or movies with sound, were shown in the theater in 1929,” he said, adding it is believed the projector room was built about the time the original sound equipment was installed, either in the late 1920s, or between 1930 and 1931.

White said the projectors are currently not operational, but they are in good enough condition that they could be.

“It would require a large amount of overhauling,” he said. “We do have the original manual that shows how to put everything together.”

At some point in the late 1970s, White said, the projectors were disassembled and removed from the room, and the pieces were stored in an area directly beneath the projection booth, which was built in the first balcony of the auditorium.

In 2015, Jay Maki, who was then the theater’s executive director, restored one of the projectors and reassembled it in the ballroom as a display.

Each projector required its own Direct Current (DC) box connected to a main box.

The main box contained a rectifier that converted alternating (AC) current to DC current. The projectors needed a maximum 3,150 watts to operate.

While there is now wiring from the boxes to the projectors, White said he does not know if any of them are connected to a power source.

The projection booth has been equipped with overhead lighting and is now part of the tour.

“The couple of tours we’ve had this winter,” White said, “We’ve taken people into the booth and they’ve loved it. I mean, how could you not?”