In 1924, ARRI built their first electric tungsten lighting fixtures with faceted mirror reflectors. A similar technology of multi-segmented mirrors would reappear 82 years later, in 2006, on the ARRIMAX 18/12 “Most Powerful HMI PAR Light on the Planet,” and on subsequent M-Series fixtures. 

Robert Richter visited America in 1925, selling ARRI equipment and working as a waiter at the Commodore Hotel in New York, at the Hollywood labs of Fox and Lasky, and then as a camera assistant at Universal. He could not have avoided noticing how the Hollywood studio system encouraged bigger and heavier cameras. Richter’s observations undoubtedly influenced ARRI camera designs after he returned to Munich, enrolled at the Munich Technological University and received a degree in engineering.