The Evolution Of Stage Lighting

There have been many stage lighting methods that have made stage lighting what it is today, e.g. Candle, Oil, And Gas. But I am going to be focusing on Electric stage lighting and the technologies around that. In 1878 British inventor Joseph Wilson Swan patented the world's first incandescent electric lamp. This was a big deal because then people could have light whatever time of day they wanted without fire. In 1879 Thomas Edison (1847-1931) receives the American patent for his incandescent lamp. In 1811 London's Savoy Theatre  installed the world's first electric lighting system. In 1903 the Kliegl Brothers installed an electrical lighting system with 96 resistance dimmers (and 20 additional dimmers for house lights) at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City using manual dimming technology developed in the late 1800s. Overall electric stage lighting was much more safe than any of the other lighting methods at that time. 

Then the electronic dimmer was invented, it was a much smaller than the manual dimmer but didn’t have any memory so therefor couldn’t save looks or scenes to be recalled for later use. Then the computerised lighting console was invented this was a big deal because then you could recall scenes using low voltage signal. Being able to recall scenes was a big deal because then you could bring up multiple lights to preset levels using one slider or button similar to submasters on today's lighting consoles. Eventually you could also program automated fade or wait times on those scenes too. 
In 1986 the U.S. Institute of Theatre Technology developed the DMX 512 protocol as a standard interface between consoles and dimmers. DMX is still used today as a primary way of communicating with dimmers and lights today. DMX is programmed by telling the console how many channels the fixture will take up depending on the properties of the fixture. For example red, green, blue, white, (mostly in LED fixtures) and dimmer would each take up one dmx channel. So a simple rgb light now would take up 4 channels. The introduction of queuing lighting consoles made it so you could record cues into the lighting console and then recall them by just pushing go every time you want to go to the next cue. 

The computerised consoles are much more complex now and with the invention of led color mixing lighting fixtures you are able to control what color comes out of a lighting fixture by just tapping the color that you want it to turn on the console, and then it figures out how to mix that color and it does it automatically.

A led color mixing fixture

The ETC Element, An computerized automatic color mixing console

Before automatic color mixing consoles you mixed the color by hand using sliders (one controlling red LEDs, one controlling green LEDs, and one controlling blue LEDs and sometimes one controlling white LEDs). You can mix pretty much any color you want with red green blue and white. LEDs also have a much longer life than incandescent bulbs so you don't have to change light bulbs. These were just a few of the many revolutions in lighting design.