In some of the earliest engravings of magic lantern slides, mechanical slides are shown. The most common slide to give a changing or moving effect was the 'slipping slide' (or slipper slide), normally used for comic efect. One piece of glass was 'slipped' over another during projection, and elements of the picture changed as sections of the image were masked or unmasked. Eyes of portraits could be made to move and noses grow to absurd lengths, eccentric characters could pop out of boxes, some limited movement could be given to arms and legs.
With the lever slide, a circular glass disc with a small moving picture element, placed over the main glass disc containing most of the picture, was turned a little in either direction by a metal lever fixed to one end. Cows could lower their necks to drink from the river.
Rackwork slides also used two glass discs. Windmills would turn, ash erupt from volcanoes, and rats creep into the mouth of a snoring man.
The chromatrope was a special rackwork slide - the two discs of geometric colour patterns usually moved in opposite directions, producing a hypnotic swirling effect on the screen.
From the 1870s, special mechanical slides to produce more realistic movement from a series of sequence drawings became available. These were the choreutoscope, a typical subject for the intermittently-moved glass strip being a dancing skeleton - and the lantern slide 'wheel of life', basically a miniature transparent phenakisticope disc with a revolving shutter, for showing drawn subjects such as ice skaters in full animation.