Hi Chevvron (by the way, are any still flying? I watched Derek Piggott demo the prototype at Booker)
I'm surprised at the 'incredulity' of the Boscombe controllers when asked to turn the lights off because at Farnborough we were fully briefed by the aircrew that it was 'the norm' and some of us had visited EFS and viewed the tape recordings of the operations
Ian was writing about the first no-lights landing trial in April 1987, it rapidly (as you say) became normal.