Voces del Prado

From Twisted Wire to LED’s

Juan Manuel Gómez Agredano, Service Technician for Electricity and Air Conditioning (Electrician), 1972-What's on

In the beginning, when I first joined the Museum, we used twisted wire, and the bulbs had filaments. And everything developed from there. We began to use incandescent lighting, with fluorescent lights. In the halls that had cornices we placed fluorescent tubes measuring 2.15 metres. The light reflectance was centralised on the walls, so that it wasn’t above the pictures. And the cornices were illuminated with fluorescent light, using indirect sources and natural light. Later we began to use incandescent lighting using halogen technology. And that’s how the lighting has been provided up until the present day, in which another lighting change has taken place with the introduction of LED’s.
Changing the Museum for good means improving the lighting systems, the security system and the Museum’s own automated systems. In fact, for security there are cameras installed all over the Museum. And the lighting can be controlled from a computer terminal. Any room, any part of the Museum can be lit up. I would like to make a mention of someone, because this was only made possible thanks to the endeavours of one person on the staff, Ángel Morales, who devoted himself to the task out of sheer pride, without being a specialist in electronics. He’s the one who made it work and he developed his own system.