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• 1 media/Alice_in_Wonderland_coloured_lantern_slides_19101919_slide_4.jpg media/Alice_in_Wonderland_coloured_lantern_slides_19101919_slide_4.jpg 2020-11-10T14:02:28-08:00 Magic Lantern History 91 by Bianca Torres plain 2020-11-25T10:57:36-08:00
  The magic lantern was a technological advancement in the 17th Century. The lantern was heavily used for educational purposes and only seen in universities and museums (Christie). Projecting images of art and science, the lantern projection became an innovative way for lectures to be taught. However, magic lanterns, like all new technology, were priced high, and this made it hard for lower and middle-class families to afford one of their own. Which eventually led to magic lanterns becoming a performance art in the mid-18th century.
  
  There are many types of lanterns to explore, however the epidiascope is unique because it is the first to switch from candle or oil lamp light sources to a limelight lamp. The epidiascope (images 1 and 2) work by screwing in a limelight into the lantern and placing the lantern slide upside down in the slot. The image is then inverted the right way up because the light reflects off a mirror, sending the image to the projector lens where it will project the right way up.  Lantern slides were projected onto a white sheet or a blank wall. What began as a lantern to project images for education, grew with its advancements into a tool used for storytelling and theatrical events. You can learn more on the epidiascope here.
   

  Magic Lanterns as a Performance Art

  Magic lanterns became more accessible in middle class homes and the public with the creation of jobs as lanternist. In the 1900’s the popularity of lanternist performing shows in public areas allowed for the middle class to watch a show that they would not have been able to afford otherwise (Humphries). Because lanternist performed shows on the corners of streets and in family homes, this made lantern slides a very popular form of entertainment for children (Palmer). Lantern shows became a huge hit for events such as children’s parties, holidays and any other special occasion. Setting up a magic lantern performance was just as mystical as the technology itself. The set-up mimicked what we know now as movie theaters. To set up lantern shows in a home, the lanternist would put up a cloth screen and stand behind the audience to perform and manage the slides. For the performance, each story or series would come with a box full of slides (image 1) that are numbered in chronological order (this helps to indicate when the slide should be placed in the lantern) and a leaflet (image 2) that contains the story or the ‘script’ with numbers to indicate which slide should be inserted.
  
  However, magic lantern shows weren’t simply a bland reading of the story. Each lanternist customized their storytelling performance through sound effects, altering their voice, and in some cases, they would incorporate music (Loiperdinger). As a whole, the event of a magic lantern performance was one that is whimsical, to be a spectator of the show was different compared to being a listener of a story.

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: from book to lantern slides

  
  With Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the story itself is so whimsical that it transports both its readers and viewers into another world. The question is how does the story of Alice translate from book to slides?
  
  Illustrations of magic lantern slides do have noticeable differences compared to Sir John Tenniel’s original drawings. This is because when reading the story of Alice, the audience is primarily a listener of the story and imagines the world of Wonderland. As a viewer of Alice’s story, you are surrounded by images of her adventures and put into the world of Wonderland. Carroll’s complex world and this nonsense story is amplified with the invention of magic lanterns (Groth).
  
  The black and white image is the original image illustrated by John Tenniel from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the colored image is the same scene that has been adapted into a lantern slide. Though both images represent the same scene, there is the addition of Alice and the depiction of movement. With Tenniel’s illustration there is an indication of an action being performed, the stuffing of the Dormouse, but it is rather static (in place). In the slide’s representation of the same scene, there are hints of motion surrounding the slide. This motion is portrayed from the Hatters hair because it is drawn feathered upwards with his hat in mid-air—depicting that he is in the middle of an action. Another clue that the slide depicts an action is the angle it is drawn in compared to the original.
  
  On the slide, Hatter’s leg is lifted on top of the table and his back leg balanced on the chair projecting the pressure he must be placing on his right leg to get enough strength to stuff the Dormouse into the tea cup. In the original illustration of this scene, the reader sees a more forward view that doesn’t give much indication of movement other than the fact that they are holding the Dormouse. The changes to the original illustration to lantern slide indicate that lantern slides needed to adapt to the new medium because watching the story unravel requires more attention to keep the viewer entertained—finding or feeling new things in one slide while they await the next slide.

  Further Reading

  Sources Cited

  Christie, Ian. "Afterword: How Does It Feel? Hidden Histories and the Elusive User Experience." In Screen Culture and the Social Question, 1880-1914, KINtop 3, edited by Vogl-Bienek Ludwig and Crangle Richard, 203-08. Indiana University Press, 2016. Accessed November 5, 2020.

  Groth, Helen. Moving Images: Nineteenth-Century Reading and Screen Practices. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Accessed November 5, 2020.

  Loiperdinger, Martin. "The Social Impact of Screen Culture 1880–1914." In Screen Culture and the Social Question, 1880-1914, KINtop 3, edited by Vogl-Bienek Ludwig and Crangle Richard, 9-19. Indiana University Press, 2016. Accessed November 5, 2020.

  Humphries, Steve. Victorian Britain Through the Magic Lantern. London. 1989. 26-38. Sidgwick and Jackson. Accessed November 5, 2020.

  Palmer, Sally B. "Projecting the Gaze: The Magic Lantern, Cultural Discipline, and Villette." Victorian Review 32, no. 1 (2006): 18-40. Accessed November 5, 2020.

  Magic Lantern History

  Bak, Meredith A. "“Ten Dollars' Worth of Fun”: The Obscured History of the Toy Magic Lantern and Early Children's Media Spectatorship." Film History 27, no. 1 (2015): 111-34. Accessed November 5, 2020. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.27.1.111.
  Bak introduces the theory of toy magic lanterns and their role in early childhood development. She discusses how magic lanterns catered to children and made them media spectators. 

  Barber, X. Theodore. "The Roots of Travel Cinema: John L. Stoddard, E. Burton Holmes and the Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Travel Lecture." Film History 5, no. 1 (1993): 68-84. Accessed November 5, 2020.
  Barber discusses the history of lanternist. Where the role of a lanternist began and how it evolved with the growing technology of magic lanterns. 

  Curtis, Scott, Philippe Gauthier, Tom Gunning, and Joshua Yumibe, eds. The Image in Early Cinema: Form and Material. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, 2018. Accessed November 5, 2020.
  More discussion of magic lantern slides as a performative experience. Exploring what a magic lantern performance looked like by discussing the illustrations as “showing to telling.”

  Gray, Frank. "Engaging with the Magic Lantern’s History." In Screen Culture and the Social Question, 1880-1914, KINtop 3, edited by Vogl-Bienek Ludwig and Crangle Richard, 173-81. Indiana University Press, 2016. Accessed November 5, 2020.
  Gray discusses the history of how lantern performances inspired film & television and how the popularity of cinema in the beginning of the 1900’s led to the fall of magic lanterns. 

  Lewis Carrol Outside Alice

  Mallardi, Rosella. “The Photographic Eye and the Vision of Childhood in Lewis Carroll.” Studies in Philology 107, no. 4 (2010): 548-572. Accessed November 5, 2020. 
  Mallardi discusses how Carroll’s hobbies allowed him to create a whimsical world that children would enjoy. She discusses Carroll’s love for photography and drawing outside of storytelling.