Software Glitch Mars Seattle's New Year's Fireworks Show

January 07, 2008 (Computerworld) -- Software problems can even wreak havoc with fireworks shows, as New Year’s Eve revelers in Seattle learned. A corrupted computer file forced the operators of a midnight fireworks display at the city’s Space Needle tower to launch most of the projectiles manually, resulting in a show that was three minutes longer than planned and not in sync with its accompanying music. Fireworks crews have been using pyrotechnics software running on PCs for more than two decades, said Dorothy Drewes, co-editor at American Fireworks News, which publishes newsletters, books and videos about fireworks. The software used now is “very graphical,” Drewes said, comparing it to video- editing tools such as Adobe Premiere. The graphical nature of the programs enables users to design and simulate complex shows that can be timed precisely with music. That kind of timing is more difficult when fireworks have to be set off by hand, Drewes added. “It’s very seldom today that you fire manually,” she said. The Seattle show was produced by Pyro Spectaculars Inc. A call to the company’s Rialto, Calif., headquarters seeking comment about the glitch wasn’t returned.

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