The Optical Magic Lantern Journal (April 1894)

76 knowledge are so much more numerous, that those who desire information on any subject may get it at home without turning out ona possibly cold winter night, and consequently the attractions of a quiet evening by their own fireside, prove more powerful than those of the lecture, whereas, formerly, the lecture was often the only available means of acquiring such information. Again the pressure of business is greater now than it formerly was, and therefore when any recreation is sought at the end of a day’s work, it will be naturally something tbat is simply amusing, such as a concert of bright music, with plenty of comic songs, an evening at the theatre, or anything else that will require no mental exertion. The smoking concert, which supplies, to some extent, in small towns, the place of the London music hall, is exceedingly popular. Education, also, at the present time, embraces so many more subjects than formerly, that lectures at the town institution, such as I well remember, when I was at school some thirty-five years ago, were looked forward to with much interest by me and my schoolfellows, as pleasant breaks in the monotony of our education, which consisted almost’ entirely of Latin and Greek, Grammar and Algebra, Euclid and. Arithmetic, have not the same charm for the rising generation as they had for us. The school boys and girls of the present day have their chemical laboratories, their applied mathematics and mechanics, their science or English literature lessons at school, so that to them, public lectures, areading of some play, it may be, a sketch of some English author’s life with extracts of choice passages from his writings, a course of experimental chemistry or mechanics, or an account of the marvels of astronomy, or the story of pre-historic times derived from ancient monuments or written on the rocks by the finger of nature, are not the novelty that they were to us, and forming as they do parts of school work, they are looked upon by the majority of boys and girls as lessons, and not as fascinating revelations of the marvellous in man and nature. Magic lantern lectures have, therefore, only shared the fate of other lectures, if they have declined in public favour. When, thanks to the aid of photography, and more especially to the introduction of rapid plates, lantern exhibitions were suddenly raised in quality, they were, at first, eagerly seized upon, partly on account of their novelty, but by this time the freshness they then possessed has worn off, and those who were attracted solely by the novelty have got tired of them, This, however, was inevitable, and for it there is no cure. The Optical Magic Lantern Jovrnal and Photogravhic Enlarger. But it seems to me that there have been other causes at work, and that the decrease in popularity due to these may be remedied. The causes may be summed up under the head of the poorness in quality of many of the lantern entertainments to which the public have been frequently treated. The poor quality is sometimes in the character of the slides, sometimes it is in the way in which they are shown, sometimes the chief fault is to be found in the lecture itself. The most common way in which a lantern entertainment is got up in small towns is as follows :—Some one who wishes to amuse or instruct his fellow townsmen, and is the fortunate possessor of a good lantern, though in many cases he is not a photographer and does not prepare his own slides, sends to one of the firms that let slides out on hire, and selects some set of coloured pictures which duly reaches him a short time before the time appointed for the lecture, accompanied by a ‘‘ descriptive reading.” This he hands over to some friend who promises to read it to the spectators, while the giver of the entertainment manages the lantern. The first error, very probably, is that an exaggerated size is chosen for the pictures, a 15 feet or 20 feet disc is shown upon the sheet, the result generally being a somewhat dimly lighted picture, and the representation of figures considerably above life size. Far better is it, except in very large halls where many of the spectators are at a distance, to so place the lantern that the disc is not more than 8 feet or 10 feet in diameter, the brilliancy will be increased fourfold, the pictures reduced to more reasonable dimensions, and the coarseness of definition, which is so annoying when a large lantern picture is seen, except from a great distance, will be lessened considerably. Next, I believe, that most photographic slides are ruined by being coloured ; for diagrams, maps, &c., colour is useful, but for general landscape subjects it is neither natural nor pleasing. Indeed if coloured slides are to be used I much prefer those painted on the glass without any photographic picture below the paint, for it is impossible by the addition of colour to the black, brown, or red. tones of the photograph to arrive at the colours of nature, hence the coloured photographic slide shown on the screen is a hybrid, lacking the comparative truthfulness of colour that a skilful artist can arrive at on plain glass, and with much of the beauty of delicate detail and truthful lighting, given by the uncoloured photograph, blocked up and lost beneath the paint. The pretty ‘‘ effect’ pictures, too, produced