Historical information

A hand-painted slide from c.1900 depicting a circular image of 11 goldfish swimming around the words 'Good Night'.

Lantern slides, sometimes called 'magic lantern' slides, are glass plates on which an image has been secured for the purpose of projection. Glass slides were etched or hand-painted for this purpose from the Eighteenth Century but the process became more popular and accessible to the public with the development of photographic-emulsion slides used with a 'Magic Lantern' device in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Photographic lantern slides comprise a double-negative emulsion layer (forming a positive image) between thin glass plates that are bound together. A number of processes existed to form and bind the emulsion layer to the base plate, including the albumen, wet plate collodion, gelatine dry plate and Woodburytype techniques. Lantern slides and magic lantern technologies are seen as foundational precursors to the development of modern photography and film-making techniques

Significance

This glass slide is significant because it provides insight into early photographic and film-making technology in use in regional Victoria during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Physical description

Thin translucent sheet of glass with a circular image printed on the front and hand-painted in shades of orange, red, blue, and green.