| A pictorial history of Fairlight Instruments, from the personal files of Peter Vogel. |
 | Tony Furse with the original Qasar Music Synthesiser. This was a very heavy box full of 74S series logic on 8 inch square wire-wrapped boards, two 6800 micros, 2 8' disk drives, and a 50 amp linear power supply. |
 | The first "M8" made by Fairlight; the circuitry had now all been put on PCBs made from hand-taped artworks(remember Bishops Graphics?). |
 | Bruce Williams, who wrote a lot of the first music synthesising (FFT) software. Making Fourier transforms run at an acceptable speed on a 1MHz 6800 was quite a feat. |
 | This was actually Fairlight's first product; an analog video effects device. |
 | Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel, probably around 1980, a year after completion of the first prototype CMI. |
 | Peter's hair is longer by this time |
 | Jean-Michel Jarre with his Fairlight, taken in JMJ's studio in France. |
 | Peter showing Jean-Michel Jarre how this contraption works. |
 | Front page of Series 3 brochure |
 | The CMI monitor was built at our factory in Rushcutter's Bay. The lightpen was bought at great expense from the USA. The monitor's front panel was made from Customwood, routed out by Alan Galt in his basement and painted by Halim Shoory in his garage. |
 | The CMI cardcage during assembly, showing the large power supply heatsinks - switchmode supplies were yet to be invented. |
 | Steve Rance, who wrote much of the CMI software, asleep after a long night of assembler programming. |
 | Fairlight celebrated its 10th birthday on 14th August 1985. This keyboard is actually a cake. |
 | Fairlight staff gather 'round while Peter and Kim cut the cake. |
 | The Fairlight on stage at Maddison Square Garden, New York City, after the sound-check for a Stevie Wonder concert, part of his "Secret life of plants" tour. |
 | Stevie Wonder playing the Fairlight at the concert. |
 | CMIs being assembled in the factory. Standing is Karel Knazovicky, and seated is Andrew Brent. |
 | Peter looks over Quentin Goldfinch's shoulder. Quentin was in charge of hardware development for some years. |
 | It's lunchtime at the Fairlight factory. Staff took it turns to treat us to the delights of the cuisine of their culture; on this day it was Vietnamese. |
 | As almost everyone who worked at Fairlight were musicians, we often enjoyed lunchtime concerts in the loading dock. Here we have a guitar trio of Karel, Tom Stewart and Charles Murray |
 | The Fairlight acapella ensemble performing at a Christmas party; L-R: Peter Vogel, John Fletcher, Quentin Goldfinch, Andrew Bell, Andrew Bettison. In the twilight years of the company, this group named itself "The Fairlight Flangers in Decay". |
 | The Lightwriter: a product that never made it to market. It was a word-processor that used the light-pen for text manipulation. A forerunner of today's mouse-driven products, but too far ahead of its time. Note the dual 8-inch floppies - 128Kbytes each. |
 | The Computer Video Instrument - video effects device. Developed by Kia Silverbrook, who was initially recruited as a test technician, it was quite revolutionary and sold well. |
 | The Entertainer was a more compact version of the CVI - I don't think it ever made it into production. |
 | Karel provides an acoustic source for a sampling test being carried out by Quentin. |
 | The first model of the "MFX" digital audio workstation. |
 | The "MFX3" digital audio workstation, circa 1999. |