Lane Knight, from a full page advertisement in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, July 8, 1994Born: January 26, 1949
Died: c. April 14, 2006
Lane Knight was an inventor and tinkerer, who lived at Roakdale near Onchiota. He made films for others from their family photos, adding music.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, April 14, 2006
‘Eccentric inventor’ dies at 57
By Peter Crowley
Adirondacks lost another eccentric this week.
Lane Knight, known for making Onchiota's weird and witty roadside signs, phoning acquaintances at all hours of the night, restoring home movies and writing a column for this newspaper, was found dead in his house Wednesday. He was 57.
He died of natural causes sometime between Saturday and Wednesday, Franklin County Coroner Ronald Keough said Thursday. A neighbor called state police after going several days without seeing Knight, and when troopers entered his house to check on him, they found him dead in his bed.
Outside, his newspaper tube contained papers dating back to Saturday, Keough said.
The house is located on the fringe of Onchiota, but Knight always insisted he lived in the one-man hamlet of Roakdale, named for John Roak, who ran a nearby sawmill more than a century ago. On Thursday, Knight's yard was still-ornamented with the decor that bore witness to his wacky sense of humor: Plastic statues of squirrels and raccoons with beer cans attached to their paws; a dog-house inhabited by a rotting boar's head and bearing a sign, “canis ignoramus”; Knight’s old Land Rover (he no longer drove for medical reasons) with its own sign, “not a Jeep”; and a U.S. flag, hanging from a pole capped with a bronze squirrel.
Outgoing and gregarious, Knight, known to some as “Brownie,” was well known throughout the greater Saranac Lake area. He loved visitors and especially loved giving them tours of the inside of his house, which he had developed into a bizarre sort of museum. Aside from local history memorabilia, war memorabilia and 1950s memorabilia, in one corner was a shrine to his father's job with Eastman Kodak's home movie division; in another was a display of toys he had played with in his youth. There was his cramped video production studio — home to one of his means of income — and a living room filled with glassed-in dioramas, which he had once made and sold.
Then there were his inventions, some practical, some practical jokes. He has two patents to his name: one for a wet-dry vacuum cleaner pipe that attaches at the base instead: of at the top so the vacuum won't tip over, the other for a cane with a toilet plunger base that, when stepped upon, pops the cane back upright.
On the other hand, Knight also liked to surprise visitors with gags he had rigged up around his house with hidden tape players. Farting noises would come from his couch, and when someone sat on his toilet seat, laughter would erupt.
Whether or not you knew Knight personally, anyone driving through Onchiota has likely seen the silly signs he and his friend Hayden “Bing” Tormey, who died last year, put up on and around Tormey's old general store. An example: Across county Route 30 from the store they had set up a tiny strip of concrete with a sign: "Onchiota International Airport (No jets)”
Noel Prellwitz of Rainbow Lake is Knight's step-nephew (his grandfather remarried Knight's mother). He described Knight as an “eccentric inventor” and “kind of a hermit” who stayed up all night and slept until the afternoon. Nevertheless, he said, Knight was also “a great networker” always trying to find jobs for friends or help them solve problems despite his own health and financial troubles --especially over the last five years or so.
“He tried very, very hard to be helpful, but the irony was that he never found a way to make it pay for himself as a career, even though he spent hours and hours and hours doing things for people.”
Knight started working for the Enterprise as a photographer in 1965 while attending Saranac Lake High School. Nearly 40 years later, he again became a regular contributor to the paper with a weekly humor column, “Lane's World,” which ran from November 2004 until January of this year, when the Enterprise cancelled it after deeming its level of comedy to have declined.
Knight was born on Jan. 26, 1949 and moved from the Rochester area to Roakdale — to the house in which he died — when he was 8. He lived in Vermont from 1972 until 1982,when he returned home to care for his ailing mother. He remained there after her death, working for a time for Paul Smith's College. Ownership of his family's 321-acre Roakdale property transferred to a nephew several years ago. Funeral arrangement had not been determined as of press time.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, July 8, 1994
Paid Advertisement:
Tri-Lakes Area Business Profiles
Heritage Video By Lane Knight
Roakdale, Onchiota, NY 12989
Phone/Fax (518) 891-3229
Modern Day Innovation For Old Home Movie Films, Slides and Photos
BY MARY ELLEN JACKSON
From black and white photo paper in the early 1900s to home movies on videotapes complete with introductions, credits and era music, one family's innovative creativity has been passed through generations.
Early in this century Gerould Taylor Lane joined Eastman Kodak. While there he created several types of black and white photo papers, some of which are still used today.
In 1929, Francis Robinson Knight (known as Bob Knight) joined Eastman Kodak. He spent the next 28 years writing books and articles on how to make home movies.
In the 1990s, Lane Knight, son of Bob Knight and grandson of Gerould Lane is putting photos, slides and old home movies onto videotapes that are complete with an introduction, credits, graphics and music that is from the era of the material he is transferring.
Many of Lane's customers are people who have read his father's books. He says, “I often wonder what he'd (his father) make of home camcorders and video transfers.” Lane's studio is part of what was once his parent's bed- room. His father died in his sleep in 1972. His bed was in the area Lane now works. “At times, I almost feel him watching over my shoulder, he'd love this stuff.”
Family heritage and a variety of jobs have led Lane to the profession he has chosen today.
As a teen-ager he was a photographer and reporter for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise; he occasionally shot slides for WPTZ-TV news. During this time he photographed weddings, business license photos and taught photography. After college he went on to be a teacher at Stowe School in Stowe, Vermont. He later became a weatherman, ad salesman and organizer at WNCS-FM radio (96.7 FM) in Montpelier, Vt. While there he learned audio engineering and mixing; he made his own news productions for broadcast. In the early 1980s he began a diorama business — miniature 3-D scenes of Vermont and the Adirondacks — electronically lighted inside, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Nov. 22nd, 1985 article. [sic] He says, “Whenever my dioramas appeared on regional TV broadcasts, I was always amazed at how truly realistic they looked.” In 1988 he bought an 8mm camcorder video camera to make VHS video catalogues to send to prospective customers.
As an experiment the same year, he videotaped his family's 1890s photo album, adding 1890s music and some era graphics from books; because of video, countless copies can be made of family history. Some people saw the 1890s tape, asked him to do one for them and that's how Heritage Video was born.
A video transfer, (having no effect on the original films, slides or photos) begins with the photos, slides or movie being recorded on to a copy camera on 8mm videotape. With the graphics and music set up, the camera tape is then down-loaded through a maze of cables and video enhancers, equalizers and colorizers. Faded colors, fuzzy images and clarity are reprocessed to produce the sharpest image and color as is possible. All this effort results in the master tape which is the final VHS tape transfer of the material, complete with graphics, music and any other special touches (such as narration). All subsequent copies are made from the master tape for the customer, using the same equipment. These copies are seldom distinguishable from the master.
The 8mm copy is stored in an archive file. In the event that a customer's master copy is lost or destroyed, it can be duplicated. Through the counsel of a patent attorney, Lane now has five inventions patent pending. They include, 1) rubber stand-up cane base, 2) automatic light for cabinets, enclosures or coolers, 3) sealing sticker for vacuum bags, 4) adapter for wet/dry vacs so hose connects at base, and 5) prescription medication bottle cap insert that talks, giving instructions and information. Presently he copyrights the master tapes for his customers in their names as a free service.
Because of fluctuating copyright laws for music he does not charge for the music he adds to the videotapes. Customers often ask where they can get the music he uses so as another service he will list albums/songs in the credits.
Lane finds that his prices are a fraction of the cost of other transfer companies. One of his customers told him of a company that charges $1.00 per photograph. He compared that price to his, “$1 per photo, at 12 per minute, that is 720 per hour, or $720 per hour and I currently charge $20 per hour regardless of what I am, doing in the studio.” That is a three-to-one ratio. It takes about three minutes to produce each minute viewed, so an hour transfer, including materials would cost around $80 versus their $720.”
He recalled a video transfer he had done for a friend who was a Vietnam vet. His friend had photos that were taken during a 77 day siege during the war. Lane transferred the photos, added era music, ( i.e. “Bad Moon Rising,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival) and used a photo of his friend's high school picture side by side with a photo of him after the battle. When his friend viewed the finished product he was so moved by the video that Lane did not charge himfor the transfer. As a result, Lane videotapes Vietnam War photos free of charge.
His basic requirements for customers is that they organize all their photos, slides and movies in chronological order, using only pencil to write on the back of the photos. Says Lane, “Customers often fail to remember they never took me on any of their vacations or ever had me over for Christmas or weddings, so how should I know when these events took place?”
He also tapes will signings and readings, to prevent any problems or disputes among heirs and survivors.
He videotapes realty properties making house hunting easy and convenient. A photo doesn't tell much about a building, but a video tour does. One customer last year liked the taping with the accompanying music and on screen graphics describing the merits of his home so much that he decided not to sell.
Heritage Video, is not just the name of a company but a bow to family heritage and history as well.
