Compulite. (Compulite of Israel; lighting automation)(Business Report) (Company Profile)

Fear of the new is nothing, well, new in the US lighting industry. Despite all the excitement generated by an almost endless supply of new technological advances, most people are more than a little hesitant to become the first on the block to actually own such innovations or incorporate them into their own work.

Fred Lindauer, director of US operations for Compulite of Israel, refers to such resistance as inertia. He should know. When Compulite first introduced the Animator line of consoles (photo, facing page), which integrate moving, conventional lighting and scrollers onto one board, to the American market at Ligthing Dimensions International 1992, the initial response was positive, but not overwhelming. The console to which it has most often been compared, Flying Pig Systems' [Wholehog.sup.TM], had just won the best product award at PLASA that year, but despite the emergence of this new innovation, people in the US were taking a …