Lantern Slides

Photographic lantern slides came about in the year 1850, the year William and Frederick Langenheim patented their “hyalotype”. Hand-painted lantern slides had already been in existence for a couple hundred years, but the Langenheims expanded on this process by putting a photographic image on the slides. The Langenheims were daguerreotypists by trade, but to make the transparent image needed for a slide, they had to use a somewhat different photographic process (Library of Congress).

Figure 1. American Garden. c. 1930. Glass lantern slide. Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens. http://newsdesk.si.edu/sites/default/files/imagecache/snapshot_image/garden-glass-slide.jpg

How they were made

                                                     

The Langenheim’s process drew from other photographic processes already in use at this time. Lantern slides required a photographic transparency, which usually required the photograph to be printed on glass. The process they developed was much the same as that used for many paper prints of the time, except the negative was printed on a glass slide rather than paper.

Wet collodion negatives and gelatin dry plate negatives were both commonly used for this process (Library of Congress). In 1895 Dwight Lathrop Elmendorf wrote a manual for novices describing how to make lantern slides, and in his opinion the ideal negative would be “slightly overtimed, and therefore a trifle flat for paper prints, but clear and full of detail, the chemical deposit or grain of the plate being exceedingly fine,” (Elmendorf 1895, 6).

The negative would be printed out onto a silver gelatin-coated glass slide about 3.25” x 4”. Elmendorf describes two methods that could be used to print onto the slide, either the contact method or the camera method. The contact method involved placing the negative against the positive and exposing it for a short time. The latent image was then developed, fixed, and washed. Alternatively, you could use the camera method and place the negative and the sensitized plate on an angle inside a long camera (Figure 2). After exposure, the image was developed, fixed, and washed in the same way as the contact method. The camera method was used for negatives that were a different size than the slides (Elmendorf 1895).

Figure 2. Camera Method – Daylight. 1895. Illustration. In Elmendorf, Dwight Lathrop. Lantern Slides, How to Make and Color Them. New York: E. & H.T. Anthony & Co., 1895. 

Although not always the case, lantern slides were often hand-tinted after development (Figure 3). After the image was developed, fixed, and tinted, it was placed in a mat and covered with a top layer of glass.

  

Figure 3. Jackson, William Henry. Woman on Deck of Ship. 1895. Glass lantern slide. 3.25 x 4 in. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/wtc.4a03287/

How they were used

The slides were viewed by placing them in a projector called a Magic Lantern (Figures 4 and 5). The lantern was a box with a light inside of it (an oil lamp, electric light, a candle, or any other form of illumination), which lit the image from behind and projected it onto a wall or screen ahead (Library of Congress).

 

Figure 4. Steward, J. H. 1886. Advertisement. In Colonial and Indian Exhibition. London: W. Clowes, 1886. http://archive.org/stream/cihm_05255#page/n604/mode/1up

There were two main purposes for lantern slides: entertainment and educational. In both functions (entertainment and educational), lantern slides proved to be the forerunner of popular technologies we use today.

The entertainment function of the lantern slides is most closely related to early cinema. Magic Lantern shows were a popular form of entertainment. The public could pay a small fee to watch a narrated animated slide show. Here are links to two interesting Youtube videos on magic lantern shows. The videos focus primarily on hand-painted slides, but the principles apply to photographic slides as well:

• “Charles Dickens and the Magic Lantern”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omuDMHj0TZY
• “American Magic Lantern Theater v3”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzCNB6z4PUc&list=PL4CE223DD9B3208DA

In terms of education, Lantern slides could be used in schools and universities in the same way that PowerPoint slides are used today (Shteynberg 2009). Just as our professors often lecture using images and slideshows, lantern slides could be used to provide slideshows to accompany class lectures.

 Figure 5. Riley Bros. Late 19^th century. Magic Lantern and boxes of slides. Collect Ireland. June, 2011. http://collectireland.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/405.jpg?w=570

Lantern slides thus played a substantial role in establishing photographs as a means of recreation and entertainment, while simultaneously finding everyday practical uses for photographic technology. Although lantern slides would ultimately be surpassed by improved technologies, it may well have played an important role in establishing photographs in society.

 

Figure 6. Jackson, William Henry.  Seoul – Exterior View of Audience Hall. 1895.  Glass lantern slide. 3.25 x 4 in. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/wtc.4a03268/

Bibliography

Elmendorf, Dwight Lathrop. Lantern Slides, How to Make and Color Them. New York: E. & H.T. Anthony & Co., 1895. http://books.google.com/books?id=6WxHAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=lantern+slides&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DCcwUdjwGoq80AH82oD4CQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA

Library of Congress. “Lantern Slides: History & Memory.” Library of Congress: American Memory. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/landscape/lanternhistory.html

Ritzenthaler, Mary L., and Diane Vogt-O’Connor. Photographs: Archival Care and Management. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006.

Shteynberg, Catherine. “Understanding the Magic Lantern.” Smithsonian Institution Archives Blog. October 2, 2009. http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/understanding-magic-lantern