Most of the props that I have are scratch built, but some of them are just modified off the shelf items or even toys that the prop department used as well, such as flashlights or Remco toy pistols. Sometimes they just covered up the brand name of an item such as a tape recorder or book for copyright reasons. Making the control panels wasn't too hard since they are mostly made of plywood and I can use the same kind of lights and switches that they originally did, although sometimes it takes some searching on ebay to get just the right 50 year old ones. My most recent acquisition was a part of Burroughs 220 mainframe computer from 1958, the last of the vacuum tube computers. The main control console was used on several alien spaceships, Alpha Control, and even in the Jupiter 2 engine room. The rest of the mainframe that I got were two tape drives and the large controller cabinet for them. I had bought a Burroughs 205 tape drive control panel and built the rest of the tape drive from mostly plywood. These tape drives were seen in many episodes.

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