19.

THE MAGIC LANTERN - An old name for picture projecting devices

Common portable oil lamps were in the 18th century simply called “lanterns”.

This optic origin to the colour slide projectors felt somewhat “magic” in those days.

They were exhibited by travelling vaudeville shows or entertainers in fairgrounds.

 
I believe this hand painted picture on a somewhat broken glass is about 200 years old.

     
     

Parlour lanterns often used all kinds of additional movable glass slides to make it more exciting.

Many different mechanical tricks were invented. 

This picture was probably completed with another movable slide painted with clouds and rain to enhance the experience.

With a safer (electric) light source this was my favourite toy in my childhood.

How did this monster work?

A strong light source and an oversized lens system were needed in the early years when this projector was built. The lamp house was like an oven. Originally made for Limelight (an oxygen-hydrogen flame directed at a cylinder of calcium oxide). This kind of bright light also meant a very strong heat, hence the chimney.

The pictures are copies from biblical wood engravings by Gustave Doré, colourised by less skilled people. Some of my remaining pictures probably originated from a travelling Christian evangelist. 

Setting up a typical gas driven projector in a chapel. 
The slides had wooden frames to avoid burning any fingers.

 The standard 8x8 cm glass pictures were swiftly changed by an invention made by Beard Eclipse.

The new slide is simply pushed in front of the old slide, and when the old is pulled out the new automatically get moved into focus. Ingenious! 

Complete sets of stories were commonly made by several companies, for example this set by E.G. Wood 1898-1900. These companies were forerunners to the upcoming film studios, but before then these nicely hand coloured photographs were very popular. 

 

Here I have chosen these three old pictures from a sequence meant for the Temperance movement.

But to a young boy they felt like the Chaplin movies I knew from the cinema matinées. So typical British and that era.

In fact my big projector was made in London by John Wrech & Son, who also introduced a Cinematograph as early as 1897. That was only two years after the official birth of moving pictures. Amazing!

TIME TRAVELLING

 I still think that all these ancient pictures can make me feel like travelling into the past. 
As a very old man it is nice to have most of them around just for my own entertainment. 

18 

ALBUMS THROUGH THE LAST CENTURY

My Grandma's Photo-album from 1912.

"Carte de visite” was a kind of small photograph, made on a thin print paper mounted on a thicker paper card made in the Standard size  54 mm × 89 mm from 1870's into the early 20th century!!

At a fairly low price common people could be able to exchange a lot of them to all their friends and visitors. 

Albums made in different sizes were made for 2,3 or 4 of those standard 54x89 cm pictures on each page.

                      

Such albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture on Victorian parlour tables. 

A very rugged, torn and ugly old leather album contained a few surprises, that I found interesting.

Inside it turned out to be a more exclusive sort of Album.

The pages were tastefully decorated. And under the last page of pictures a small Swiss mechanical music box was hidden. It still is able to play "Home sweet home" or as an alternative "Home to the range".    

This was the first "Music album" I came across.

But in some sense Albums for gramophone records could be called Music albums too.

These were probably used in the early years of the 1910's. 

This strange album seems to be from the 1930's

A German course in typewriting using marsh music to get the proper rhythm. Made by Winklers Verlag (Gebrüder Grimm) Darmstadt. In those days the drudging labour of typing documents was generally assigned to female personnel. - But the idea with marsh music seems very strange to me. 

                                                    

     

 Music albums in the sense I remember them looked like this. In the 1940's we had record changers able to play a whole album automatically.

 LP records were introduced in the 1950's. Microgrooves increased the time of playing to an album on  one record. To my surprise the phrase "Music album" continued to be used!

This little trick seems a bit absurd. 

"Warning! Do not use as LP's on your old turntable. These are just the front of four 12 cm CD-records produced by Attention media."

ALBUM

The word is still used today by music artists, media and record companies meaning a collection of songs. But that's another story.

17.

SOME

MORE BROWNIES FOUND

The Kodak Brownie Box-cameras were produced from 1900 to 1957.
Apart from the design and a flash contact, it was the same simple box as always.

From the commonly used Kodak 620 film you got pictures size 6x9 cm.

Slightly bigger pictures got popular in USA by using the 616 film.

In my view that improvement from 6x9 to 6,5x11 cm format was hardly significant.

  

Over the years the exteriors changed

in colours and patterns according to 

the taste of its time. 

       Enamelled font in
      "Art Nouveau"
         but still the same old
         Brownie concept.

Already in 1901 Kodak realized that the Box-cameras were a bit clumsy.

Most of the forerunners had bellows to achieve a good focusing. To mimic a more professional camera, a "Brownie Folding" were made too, but in a bit simpler version. Not that inexpensive as the boxes though.

A cheaper version were made in 1937. It looked well, but had the same performance as the eldest boxes. That is "fix-focus" and only one shutter-speed (I) unless you had a good tripod and solid knowledge of measuring light and time determination (B).

The main problem with Brownie-boxes was the "fix-focus", that meant a lack of focus closer to the camera than 2 meters. So the german factory invented a built in Portrait-lens that could be used for "close ups" between 1 and 2 meters.

 Kodak cameras were made in many countries and in all sorts of design, inventions and constructions. 

But I am not aware of any trademark as long lived as

Brownie.