The Mechanization of Slide Production
The video above provides a brief introduction to the magic lantern show, particularly as a forerunner to the cinematic moving image. The clip traces the lantern show’s evolution from its place in early optical experiments, to its role in the gothic spectacle known as phantasmagoria, to late Victorian educational lectures. Histories of the moving image draw from extant examples of slides, illustrations of performance, and eyewitness accounts to study the content of lantern shows. As the clip suggests, researchers often bring an element of experimental archaeology to these reconstructive projects. In the video, Terry Borton, the producer and lead performer of the American Magic-Lantern Theater, demonstrates two modes of studying lantern ephemera. First, he introduces the “rat catcher” slide mechanical workings. The clip then cuts to the presentation of this slide in front of a live audience. The sequence closes with a nineteenth-century illustration of the rat catcher as part of an annual Sunday School treat. The juxtaposition between the slide as object and as a audio-visual experience exposes the implied liveliness of its presentation in nineteenth-century shows and in representations of this slide, particularly in illustrations. As is evident in the videos interspersed below, many introductions to the magic lantern as a forerunner of film and as a performance medium excavate the history of the lantern show through material ephemera.[1] Material ephemera like lanterns and slides speak to the ways that magic lantern shows evolved over time.
The period that I will study falls between two pivotal innovations in lantern slide production: the debut of Philip Carpenter’s copperplate-printed slides in 1821 and the rise of photographic material in the 1870s. This particular period is often overlooked within histories of the moving image, including the clip above, for scholars tend to gravitate toward the lantern’s early days as a gothic spectacle or toward their later apex as a vehicle for photographic images in late-Victorian and Edwardian England. The popularity of phantasmagoria and photographic material in scholarship is due in part to the accessibility of materials pertaining to magic lantern shows. In the case of phantasmagoria, illustrations of lantern shows and published eyewitness accounts help address the relative rarity of slides used in these performances. Furthermore, the visual vocabulary of these shows and their accompanying soundtrack persisted as visual tropes and sonic cues within gothic literature long after phantasmagoria ceased to be a popular entertainment. On the other end of the spectrum, the vast quantities of slides produced in the 1890s and after has meant that more photographic images have survived in private and public collections than their earlier, engraved counterparts. These photographic sets include numerous lantern shows created by missionaries while traveling abroad. The intervening period between 1821 and 1870, in which slide makers employed a partially mechanized manufacturing process, has been understudied due to the fragility and scarcity of the slides. Recent studies of Philip Carpenter’s production techniques, particularly by Stuart Talbot and Philip Roberts, have placed Carpenter more centrally within the technological development of the magic lantern. I suggest that Carpenter’s innovative approach to slide manufacture ultimately laid the groundwork for the global dissemination of projection equipment in the hands of missionaries.
Phantastic Beasts (and Where to Find Them)
The magic lantern show had a long and rather sordid history before Philip Carpenter arrived on the lantern scene. Christiaan Huygens and his contemporary Athanasius Kircher were among many European philosophers who engaged in optical experiments in the 1650s.[2] Spellbound by the lantern technology’s almost supernatural ability to make figures appear and disappear out of thin air, performers adopted this novelty item in order to represent demons, ghosts, and imps. In the hands of itinerant street performers and professed mediums, magic lanterns entertained and amazed audiences across continental Europe. By the 1780s, the most enterprising of these showmen had transformed the magic lantern show into a gothic spectacle known as phantasmagoria, replete with ghosts that appeared out of smoke, devils that flew around the room, and skeletal figures that rushed towards the audience, only to vanish as suddenly as they appeared. These ghostly apparitions were often accompanied with sound effects, including claps of thunder, howling wind, and even the other-wordly sounds of the harmonium. In the video below, Mervyn Heard describes the multisensory nature of phantasmagoria, including the cabinet of curiosities and scientific demonstrations that preceded this type of lantern show.Performers like E. G. Robertson and Paul de Philipsthal (best known by his stage-name, Philador) dazzled Parisian audiences with shows that purportedly “lifted the veil” separating the living from the dead. Due to the relatively dim light produced by an oil lamp and the short throw of the lanterns that they used, their performances were relegated to small, dark rooms or crypts, which limited the size of the audience at each lantern show. Their petit reign of terror in France would be cut short by a fateful decision to cross over—the English Channel, that is—in 1801.[3] Philador’s arrival in Britain at the height of the phantasmagoria craze ushered in a new era of technological innovation. Philador’s mechanical improvements to the phantasmagoria lantern made it light and portable. Yet, the glass lenses that magnified the light and focused the image, as well as the glass slides, were difficult to mass produce.
Carpenter’s Improved Phantasmagoria Lantern
An ambitious optician from Birmingham, Philip Carpenter, was the first to apply industrial practices to manufacture lanterns’ glass components in 1821. Through his experience making microscopes and telescopes, Carpenter learned how to produce the large convex and concave lenses on an unprecedented scale, meaning that he could manufacture the parts of the lantern that magnified and focused light faster than his competitors. He earned widespread acclaim for high-quality achromatic lenses for telescopes and microscopes. According to one Victorian historian writing in 1866, Carpenter “had raised telescopes from mere toys to philosophical instruments” because his lenses allowed for a greater power of magnification without distorting color.[4] Carpenter applied advanced lens-making techniques to refine the design of projection equipment. By pairing two bi-convex lenses, Carpenter discovered a better way to focus the lantern’s light source. This design feature not only created a brighter image but also reduced the amount of fuel needed to do so.Carpenter made a second major breakthrough when he adapted copperplate printing to slide production. Before this development, all images had to be hand-painted onto the surface of the slide. Inspired by the ceramic factories of Birmingham, copperplate printing made it possible to quickly and efficiently stamp the outlines of the image onto the glass; these outlines would then be chemically etched into the glass’ surface. Carpenter’s printing techniques did not fully mechanize slide-making, for slides needed to be hand painted after the outline had been burned into the glass. It did, however, dramatically reduce the time needed to manufacture slides. Carpenter included a description of the improved lantern in Elements of Zoology (1823), a volume which functioned as a script to a set of copperplate-printed zoological slides. While the advertisement at the end of the book did not contain the prices of the equipment on offer, it provided a snapshot of his inventory. The bulk of this advertisement described slides that depict “costumes,” both ancient and modern, European and non-Western. Such content reveals an early demand for slides that enabled imagined encounters with those who lived in the South Pacific, India, and Central Africa. The rest of the advertisement listed material that would make its way into the hands of missionaries: images of animals, plant life, astronomical diagrams, portraits of the kings of England, views of buildings, and humorous subjects.[5]
These two innovations made Carpenter so successful that he moved his shop from Birmingham to London in 1826. As Stuart Talbot notes, the shop’s close proximity to Westminster Bridge allowed Carpenter to take full advantage of the new oxy-hydrogen gas that lit London.[6] Oxy-hydrogen light, better known as limelight, burned brighter than the oil lamps that had lit the previous generation of lanterns. This meant that lanternists could draw bigger crowds, transforming the lantern show from a mostly private affair to a public spectacle. Unlike the telescope and the microscope which had been lifted from the world of entertainment into academic pursuits, the popularity of the lantern stemmed from its use as both a “toy” and a source of instruction. Carpenter offered sets of slides and readings that ranged from comic material designed for pure entertainment to lectures on astronomy, zoology, and biblical material. By applying printing techniques to slides and readings, Carpenter made lantern material widely available to educators, entertainers, and amateur lanternists. Unfortunately, Carpenter would not see the results of his innovative approach to optics, for he died on April 30th, 1833. His sister Mary took over the firm in partnership with William Westley who had been an apprentice to Carpenter during the company’s early years in Birmingham. In 1835, William and Mary released the culmination of company’s technological advancements—Carpenter & Westley’s “improved phantasmagoria lantern.”
Carpenter and Westley’s improved phantasmagoria lantern would represent one of the most enduring forms of projector, inspiring manufacturers to copy his design by producing lanterns like the one below.
Like its predecessors, Carpenter’s improved phantasmagoria lantern was designed operate in complete darkness. The topmost part of the chimney, which is missing here but is present in this example in the Bill Douglass Museum, bent at a 45 degree angle to limit the amount of light emanating from the lantern. The improved phantasmagoria lantern could be used with paraffin lamps or with the more powerful limelight. The model above was designed to be used with an oil lamp, for it lacks the slit in the back for oxygen and hydrogen tubes (Annotation 5).
The slides designed to accompany this projector reflect the changing tastes within Victorian entertainment. This shift eliminated ghosts from the lanternist’s repertoire in favor of dazzling special effects that could be accomplished with two or more lanterns. Henry Langston Childe developed a sequence of “dissolving views” in which one image slowly faded while another came into view. The most famous of these scenes involved a mill in summer which transitioned into a wintry landscape, a version of which can be seen in the clip below.
The clip also contains an example of how Victorians used the rapid transitions accomplished by a sliding piece of glass for comic effect. Slippers, levers, and rachwork mechanisms simulated movement, creating images of ships rocking back and forth in the waves to kaledescopic swirls of colors to depictions of the planets rotating around the sun.
Commercial manufacturer’s shied away from depicting the demons and imps that had once dominated lantern shows, but that is not to say that phantasmagoria disappeared entirely. The Adelphi’s 1826 production of The Flying Dutchman used a lantern in order to make the eponymous vessel appear at the end of Act 1.
The directions of the shadows in this illustration by Isaac Robert Cruikshank indicate that the lantern was positioned behind a screen, a configuration favored by phantasmagors. Projection would continue to be a key feature of ghostly apparitions on stage, culminating in the debut of Pepper’s Ghost in an 1862 production of Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man at the Royal Polytechnic Institute. In addition to these, the lantern also functioned as literary inspiration. As John Plunkett suggests in the clip above, Dickens positioned the lantern as an integral part of his writing process. Joss March has shown that Dickens drew from the visual tropes and narrative techniques of magic lantern shows in order to structure the appearance of the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.[7]
The arrival of photography
Evangelists, missionaries, and social reformers also positioned the lantern as a vehicle for moral reform. The increasing portability of camera equipment and the rapid development of photography opened new directions for lantern shows. As they traveled to the fringes of the empire, missionaries used the camera to document the landscapes over which they traversed, the people whom they encountered, and the commodities that they produced. James Ryan suggests that lectures given by missionaries upon their return to England laid the groundwork for the virtual travel narratives that would become a mainstay of geographic education. Indeed, Sunday schools would often include narratives of exploration and evangelization, illustrated by photographic lantern slides, as part of annual Christmastide celebrations. Even as late as 1890, the lantern was inseparable from this religious context. When the Royal Geographical Society wanted to purchase a projector of its own, one of the members objected by calling the lantern a “Sunday School treat.”[8]Late Victorian lantern shows appropriated photography to tell fictional narratives as well. As Joe Kember describes in the video above, temperance societies produced lantern slides and scripts that warned of the perils of alcohol through characters on screen. These lantern shows often included communal hymn singing, solo performances, and choirs. Encouraging the audience to respond to key moments in the narrative through song provided a means for the audience to embody the ideals being represented on screen.
The lantern persisted as a means for educational entertainment long after the advent of film. Indiana University’s own collection of magic lantern slides speaks to the enduring popularity of projectors, particularly in educational settings, as a means to supplement lectures with visual material. A photo taken in 1938 shows the extent of IU’s collection of slides. The advertisement in the center of the photo captures the range of subjects on offer by featuring two men in Japanese dress, and elephant, a windmill, and a mathematical diagram. The debut of Kodak’s carousel slide projector in 1961 signaled the end of the magic lantern’s long reign within the classroom, for 35mm slides were easier to transport and store. The lantern’s contribution to screen culture, particularly in educational settings, is reflected in the distinctly nineteenth-century vocabulary that we use to describe the structure of PowerPoint presentations today. Technology has advanced to the point where we no longer need to manipulate pieces of glass or film to project images as we speak, and yet we refer to the building blocks of our presentation as “slides,” an homage to the days of the lantern when pieces of glass slid in and out of the projector. Vestiges of the special effects accomplished by mechanical slides and biunial lanterns can be found in transitions and animation effects, including the appear, disappear, fly in, and dissolve. As I will discuss in the next section, missionaries have been recurring features in longstanding conversations about educational technology and the expansion of the British empire. I will suggest that ephemera from the heydey of copperplate printed slides offers a window through which to study the lantern’s role in structuring encounters with local and indigenous peoples.
[1] I have curated a longer list of videos pertaining to the magic lantern, accessible via this link. The playlist includes introductions to magic lantern shows, material ephemera, and contemporary performance; recreations of magic lantern shows, spanning phantasmagoric demons and imps to mechanical slides to educational lectures; and remediations of magic lantern shows in film and video games.
[2] Franz Paul Liesegang. Dates and Sources: A Contribution to the History of the Art of Projection and to Cinematography. pp. 10-11.
[3] For an expanded discussion of phantasmagoria, see Mervyn Heard’s Phantasmagoria: The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern. Hastings: The Projection Box, 2006. Print. and Deac Rossell’s Laterna Magica. Magic Lantern. Trans. into German by Marita Kuhn. Vol. 1. Stutgart: Füsslin Verlag, 2008. Print.
[4] , Samuel Timmins, The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham, 1866, p. 534, quoted in Stuart Talbot's, “The Perfectionist Projectionist: Philip Carpenter, 24 Regent Street, London,” Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 88, 2006, p. 17, accessible via Howard Lynk's website on early microscopes. Talbot's article offers a more detailed history about the formation of Philip Carpenter's company, his subsequent move to London, and his inventory of magic lanterns, microscopes, kalaidoscopes, and telescopes. For more information on the need for double lenses to condense the light, see “The Optical System of the Lantern” in T.P. Hepworth’s The Book of the Lantern, Hazell, Watson, and Viey, Ld., 1899, reprinted by Arno Press Inc., accessed via interlibrary loan from the University of Illinois Library, 1978, pp. 16-29.
[5] Phillip Robert describes how Carpenter responded to the increasing demand for scientific entertainment in domestic settings. Roberts' article argues that Carpenter's ability to produce scientific instruments and optical toys like the lantern placed him at the forefront of this market. See "Philip Carpenter and the convergence of science and entertainment in the early-nineteenth century instrument trade," Sound and Vision, no. 7, 2007, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/170707, accessible via the Science Museum Group Jounral (UK).
[6] Talbot, p. 17.
[7] Joss Marsh. “Dickensian ‘Dissolving Views”: The Magic Lantern, Visual Story-Telling, and the Victorian Technological Imagination.” Comparative Critical Studies 6.3 (2009): 333-346.
[8] Hugh Robert Mill. The Record of the Royal Geographical Society 1830-1930. London, 1930, p103. Quoted in Picturing Empire, p 193.
