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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.0

Dead medium: The Magic Lantern

From: bruces_AT_well.com (Bruce Sterling)

Source: Peck and Snyder's Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4)

Who were the "content providers" for the magic lantern industry? It would seem that most slides were very generic; job-lot, unsigned work by anonymous artisans. The Peck and Snyder catalog offers a wide variety of material on slides, but gives no hint about the lives or identities of their creators.

Plain slides, simple images on single frames of painted glass, came in a number of distinct genres: Comedy, natural history, nursery tales, landscape views, and Scripture. These would all seem to be children's topics.

More mechanically elaborate slides offered broad, hand- painted landscape panoramas, moving "views," and "conundrums," or written riddles whose image could be flipped over on the screen to reveal the answer.

Peck and Snyder's Lever Slides illustrate the scope of partial animation in the magic lantern medium. Note that they offer more than 200 lever slides; the early versions are now apparently obsolete, removed from circulation like comic books in a later century. These slide descriptions give considerable insight into the taste and humor of the period. I quote from the catalog (((my comments are in triple parens))):

Lever slides $1.75 each, 4 1/2 x 7 inches
200. SEE SAW
201. BOY BEATING DONKEY. Cruel blows descend on poor donkey's head.
203. GABRIEL GRUBB AND THE HOB GOBLIN. See sawing on tombstone, keeping poor Grubb in a terrible fright.
204. DONKEY RUNNING AWAY. With buxom country lass.
206. JUDY AND THE BABY. Judy appears at the window with the baby, which she tosses up and down, much to baby's delight.
207. SAM WELLER BLACKING BOOTS. Sam brushes away, but no thought of the approaching searchers for "Jingle" and the lady. (((Weller was created by Charles Dickens, though we see no acknowledgement of this fact. One comes to understand why Charles Dickens became such a stickler for intellectual property rights)))

208. FREE LUNCH. Man at an American lunch counter, raises the dainty morsel on his fork.
209. MENDICANT AT COTTAGE DOOR. A half frozen beggar lifts his hat in appeal to the sturdy woman at a cottage door.
210. AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. A portly, well-to-do gentleman gracefully raises his hat. A good slide with which to open an exhibition.

212. DENTIST AND PATIENT. To draw a refractory tooth, dentist and patient brace themselves for a heavy pull, but to the dentist's horror, the patient's HEAD as well as his tooth comes out.

214. BEGGAR AND CHILD. A street beggar bows, asking alms from a child.

218. THE HYPOCRITE. An old woman, who with her eyes turned upward looks pious, but when she casts them down and her jaw drops, looks a veritable old hag.

223. SAMBO WITH BANJO. Moves hand and arm very

naturally. 224. SAMBO WITH CYMBALS. Playing vigorously.

227. PORKER, THE COOK. A Pig in Cook's costume, stands before the kitchen range and tastes the savory dishes before him.

(((It's of considerable interest to see that Peck and Snyder offer the chance for individual entrepreneurs to develop their own slides, as the following illustrates.)))

SLIDES TO ORDER. The above illustrations will perhaps show the range of possibilities, and while we would have to make special estimates in some cases, we can give the following prices as a groundwork, viz:

3 1/4 X 4 1/4 Photographs, 2 1/2 to 3 inch Picture, uncolored ... $1.50 each
" " " colored, $2.50 each

Mechanical effects, 2 1/2 to 3 inch Picture, $3.00 to $15.00
Lettered Advertisers " " " black letters, 75 cents

(((Peck and Snyder's Chromatropes -- slides with rotating rackwork -- are also worthy of a look:)))

CHROMATROPES

FINE GEOMETRICAL PATTERNS, with brilliant chromatic effects ... each, $1.50
CHANGEABLE HEADS (3 inch single glasses) $1.50
GOOD-NIGHT CHROMATROPE -- the words "Good Night" in a handsome design, which revolve in a display of brilliant colors, very effective in closing an exhibition .......... Each, $2.50
LANDSCAPE CHROMATROPE. A landscape finely painted is show, with mill and revolving water-wheel, or like effect .... Each, $3.00

TOO MANY COOKS. A large pot is standing over a fire and a number (which seems endless) of cooks are cast into the pot and are apparently boiled into soup, or they may be ejected from the pot, as if they were boiling over ... Each $3.00
RAT EATING EXTRAORDINARY. Rat after rat crawls up the bed clothes, and running along the bed disappears into the open mouth of a heavy sleeper... Each, $3.00

(((Brian Coe, author of HISTORY OF MOVIE PHOTOGRAPHY, describes a British rat-swallowing chromatrope: "The highly popular 'Man eating rats' slide. The sleeper's jaw can be moved up by operating a lever; the rats, in an endless procession, run into his mouth when the handle is turned. The subject could cose ten shillings in the 1880s, perhaps half a week's wages.")))

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