Page 71 - All About History - Issue 52-17

Magic lantern

A magic lantern show
A Magic Lantern show in
given for 1,450 poor
front of a large audience
children at the Fulham
Liberal Club, c.1889

Custard all benefitted from this but, with slides
relatively cheap and easy to produce, small, local “The magic lantern gave the
companies and products could also get their name
up on the screen. One innovation originating in common man greater access”
the US was the production of illustrated slides for
the lyrics of popular songs. The audience would all accompanied by a spoken narrative, thus opening poems. The music was still there, but the need for
sing the lyrics to a musical accompaniment. The up the world to the illiterate. This in turn became a imagination was not. Things had moved on.
idea was to sell the sheet music for the song, but it vital element in the promotion of political parties, Lantern slides clung on for a while to a tiny,
is estimated that the slides of one particular ballad, especially those representing the working man. unique place in the world. Early cinema was
The Little Lost Child, sold two million copies in the Through political rallies, the magic lantern expensive, and the pioneering equipment
United States alone. gave the common man greater access was somewhat unreliable at first. The
In such a highly charged political era as the to political opinion and political simple technology of the lantern
19th century, the magic lantern was to prove a big choice, and as such set the tone that had changed little in more
asset to politics. Eager to take advantage of such a for a relationship between than 200 years was to be a
popular mass medium, it was again photography mass media and politics that truly great asset. Charities
that added to the lantern show’s attraction as a is prevalent today. and political parties with
tool of propaganda and government. Whether It is ironic that, as limited funds could not
events in the Crimea or the American Civil War, the forerunner of the afford the new technology,
a lantern show could display in far more graphic moving image, it was this and neither could the
detail the reality of war. Major disasters were a development that was to advertisers whose products
popular theme, as were events concerning royalty sign the death warrant of still appeared on lantern slides
and presidents alike. Local politicians could canvas the magic lantern. But it did in the newly formed cinemas.
hundreds of potential voters at a time, and election not die straight away. Movies Children certainly still played
‘The Bottle’ is an
results could be displayed for hundreds of people brought the world to life, albeit in a eight part slide show with and were thrilled by their
to see. jerky, mechanical way. They did create exhorting the dangers toy lanterns. However, the end was
Even though the newspapers could print and a magic all of their own, but it was magic of drinking inevitable. Slide projectors in the home
present the news much faster, they still lacked the without the magician, the lanternist were to find a brand-new renaissance
overwhelming impact of imagery that a lantern as showman, instructor and guide. Movies were right through to the 1970s, but the greatest legacy
show could produce. Nor could they replicate made to be watched. The projector was in charge, of the magic lantern was the birth of a mass visual
the shared sense of pride, anger or despair that and audiences were to accept this new moving multimedia, bringing people together to be amazed,
such news presentations were able to incite in world, passively, silently. Gone was the feeling and to share their interests and experiences of a © Alamy, Getty Images
their audience. Many such presentations were of interaction, the singing of hymns or recital of vast and ever-changing world.
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