Following the Phantasmagoria ghost shows of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, also the era of the itinerant lanternist who would give a simple show for a few coins, the magic lantern started to develop as an instrument for wider use. Magic lanterns were used in theatres, and later at institutions such as the Royal Polytechnic in London, a permanent exhibition-museum of the scientific arts, and theatre for optical wonders. The old illuminants of oil gave way to brighter limelight. The best hand-painted slides (left) were of a fine quality by mid-century. From the 1820s slides printed with black outlines from copper plates (and then coloured) became a production technique to supplement expensive hand-painted slides, and from 1850 photographic slides started to appear, showing real views of the world to audiences that had previously only seen artists' impressions. The magic lantern (re-named the optical lantern) found a home in churches and some schools.

From the 1870s 'transfer' slides (below, left), cheaply produced and manufactured in their thousands, gave less wealthy amateur showpeople access, and domestic magic lanterns with paraffin lamps were popular, but quality declined. In England, a new genre - photographic 'life model' slides, tableaux series telling a story, posed by amateur 'actors' against painted backcloths, were popular (especially with religious groups and Temperance Societies) from the 1880s until the First World War.

Many of the first film showmen were previously lanternists, and 'mixed' programmes of slides and films were common in the 1890s and early 1900s. During the twentieth century the magic lantern gradually became the slide projector, with electric light bulb and, after WW2, smaller slides, often real-colour photographs.

Take your places for
A MAGIC LANTERN SHOW

Back to The Projection Box