Home

Magic Lantern 1808 to 1930.

Did you ever hear about the history of Magic Lantern and Stereoscope? Well the first to make Magic Lanterns in England was Philip Carpenter in about 1808. The Magic Lantern is an optical instrument by means of which a magnified image of a picture on glass is thrown upon a white screen or wall in a darkened room by the lanternist. Long before cinema and TV, the Magic Lantern - the earliest form of slide projector was used to tell historic tales, travelogues, and nature stories, as well as show the ancient monuments in Egypt.
A simple image projector it used hand-painted or photographic glass slides. These images were initially lit by natural light, candles, oil or gas but then came limelight (lime glows brilliantly when hot) and paraffin lamps, some of which were later converted to use electricity. The Magic Lantern was especially popular during Victorian and Edwardian times and used at public shows and as a form of home entertainment. Victorians used their own magic lantern operator to show his story-telling images, or the studio photographer to capture their likeness or calling cards. The old standard size of lantern slide in Great Britain is 3 1/4 inches sq. but a popular size in U.S. is 3 1/4 x 4 inches. Projectors were made between 1800 and 1930 but most found today date from about 1890 and 1920 and sell at auction for between £200 to £400. The hand-painted glass slides are themselves collectable at £10 to £50 per set.


Browser-type hand stereoscope 1860 to 1880.

The wooden hand stereoscope with its double lens was 12 inches long presenting the views in a 3-D image (three-dimensional having or appearing to have length, breadth, and depth). The recording and presentation of paired images gave the viewer an impression of solidness and depth. The basic system, developed from 1845, is to photograph the scene with two cameras whose lenses are 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 apart - the normal separation of human eyes and view the results in a device which allows each eye to see only its appropriate right-left eye co-ordination.

The stereoscope beam rapidly became an essential Victorian novelty item - even Queen Victoria owned one. Today the cards are worth 50p to £5 and hand stereoscopes are worth £60 to £100 in antiques shops. The Victorians developed an enormous appetite for photographs from various places, compiling albums of views which give an insight into the tradition of the Grand Tour and the importance given to the Encyclopaedia Britannia . Most of these views were taken and published by commercial photographers. Among them was the famous English Photographer Francis Frith (1822-1898) best known for his images of Ancient Egyptian Monuments and the Holy Land photographed from the late 1850 onwards. He was born in 1822 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, to Quaker parents.
Frith was the first photographer of importance to visit the land of the Pharaohs using the wet collodion glass plate negative. His first visit to Egypt was between September 1856 to July 1857. He travelled up the Nile Valley, and looked at the amazing monuments from Alexandria to Abu Simbel. His reputation was established by the publication of his series in 1857 where each original photograph was accompanied by a descriptive text. The Times (London) wrote that they carry us far beyond anything that is in the power of the most accomplished artist to transfer to his canvas.
Frith travelled with three different cameras, a stereoscopic camera, an 8x10 inch camera for whole plate glass negatives, and a 16x20 inch plate camera. There were many draw backs using the collodion process, which apart from requiring bulky photographic equipment, needed processing facilities on hand. This meant travelling with a photographic wagon dragged by donkeys, and when this was not possible necessitated the erection of a photographic tent for the coating and developing of the glass plates. The technical difficulties were immense, especially with the largest plates. There was also the sand, flies, and the heat of the desert to contend with, the temperatures often exceeding 120 F, hot enough for the collodion itself to boil. At other times sandstorms would ruin his plates.
Friths third visit to the Nile Valley in the summer of 1859, which lasted well into the next year. He revisited Cairo and the Nile, pushing further south than any previous photographer, to Soleb in Egyptian-ruled Nubia, well beyond the Second Cataract at Wadi Halfa. He returned to England and began a new career as both photographer and publisher. He issued a set of sixty views, Cairo, Sinai, Jerusalem and the Pyramids of Egypt and sets of prints with commentaries were issued monthly at ten shillings each set. Later he published these as a two volume book entitled Egypt and Palestine Photographed and described.
Egypt as a source of considerable interest was a major power remembered by its monuments, The Pyramids of Giza, The Great Sphinx, The Step Pyramid Sakkara, The Pyramids at Medium, Sculptured Reliefs and Temple at Dendera, The Karnak Obelisks and Temples, The Luxor Temple, The Colossi of Memnon, The Ramesseum, The Valley of The Tombs of The Kings, Thebes, Philae, The Facade of The Great Temple at Abu Simbel, Temples, Pylons and Gigantic Statues. No surprise then that Egypt become a focus of Photographic attention, both mysterious and biblical - a line for bold empire builders one such was F. Frith, who was seen as the epitome of a Victorians self-made man.
The photography was an ideal tool for exploring, cataloguing, dissecting, and storing the material world. And its main proving ground, in terms of exploring the wide world beyond the European centre of its invention, was Egypt. Painters and draftsmen might have been able to return with their own painstaking, often highly faithful records of Egyptian wonders but the camera brought back the reality. Viewers in England and France could now see the fabulous Sphinx and Pyramids for themselves, not simply an artists but natures own impression.
In July 1857 Frith and his travelling companion, Francis Herbert Wenham (1824-1908) sent one hundred stereoscopic negatives back to Negretti and Zambra in London, one of the leading publishers of foreign and local stereo views of the day. Negretti and Zambra had the stereo negatives printed up as transparencies. These albumen-on glass stereos were shown in the spring of 1857 at The Photographic Society meeting in London, yet were withheld from commercial distribution for fear of piracy.
Concurrently with the publication of the stereos during the winter and spring of 1857 and 1858, slide shows of Frith's Egyptian - and a few Holy Land-views were held in Manchester and Liverpool. The projected size of the images was 30 by 25 feet via a regular magic lantern, creating so-called dissolving views.
Actually, instead of exhibiting widely upon his final return home, Frith probably spent the end of 1860 and the next year getting married and preparing to start family life on his own-undertakings which he termed "life in earnest". His bride was Mary Ann Rosling, the 22- year- old daughter of his Quaker neighbours in Reigate. The Friths had eight children during their long and contented marriage. Francis died at his winter home in Cannes, France in 1898. He was 76 years old.
The management of F. Frith & Co. -increasingly concentrating on postcards and printed views-passed to Frith's children and their descendants until 1968, when the studios and their contents were sold; the purchaser was insolvent by early 1971. The remaining photographic contents of the companys headquarters are recognised as a treasure trove of bygone Victorian life in Great Britain.
Sadly, the collodion negatives of the ruins of Egypt and the relics of Palestine have themselves become photographic ruins. Many pre-1886 glassplate negatives, including the Middle East views, had been smashed with hammers to make concrete for an outhouse floor at the studios. Others, including some of the 16-by-20 inch Egyptian plates, had been stored and forgotten outdoors in the firm's garden. Exposure to the elements had damaged some of them beyond recovery.

David Breslin

Home