The Triforium is interesting looking, but the old control room for it is amazing! This old tech is fascinating, I can’t imagine writing code using paper tape. Eecue.com had the opportunity to have a tour of the old control room (it has since been replaced by a modern control system).

“The Triforium is the name of a six story 60 ton public sculpture in the Los Angeles Mall Civic Center complex, located at the intersection of Temple and Main Streets in Downtown Los Angeles.

When we looked through the control center today we found an old Teletype machine that was used to read and write punch tape which held the program the Triforium’s computer used to synchronize with music. Our goal is to take those tapes, capture them and use them as a basis for the new computer control, which will most likely be a BASIC stamp or a PIC microcontroller. Once that works the next step, would ideally be to have some type of web interface to the system.”