Not quite the same as an arc lamp, but in high school I did theater tech stuff for the middle school. One year the only thing the lighting rental company had fo

Not quite the same as an arc lamp, but in high school I did theater tech stuff for the middle school. One year the only thing the lighting rental company had for a follow spot was an HID-based unit. It was significantly larger, heavier, and beefier than the tin-can Strong Trooperettes we had. Designed for large theaters. It came with a huge transformer pack because it needed 220/240 power, and we were plebs with single-phase 120V. It had an hour-meter for lamp time. It had a start button. Not only did it have a start button, it had startup procedures. First the fan, then power, then start. It had cool-down procedures, too. The fan was not some cheesy shaded-poll bullshit out of an overhead transparency projector like on our Trooperettes. No, sir. A squirrel-cage blower, the kind with serious ball bearings and lots of momentum that took several seconds to spool up, with a noise that sounded like you were turning on something in a nuclear power plant. It made a "whooMMMMM" noise when you pushed the start button from an inrush of angry pixies. It was the coolest goddamn thing a bunch of young theater nerds had ever seen.