The Optical Magic Lantern Journal (December 1901)

109 The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger. method of illustration in his musical entertainments with great skill and success. In fact, the capabilities of such an instrument for the purpose of illustration are almost unlimited, and in competent hands the triple lantern, which was so largely in use a very few years since, has produced, and still produces splendid results, and has met with a large share of public favour. ; Nevertheless, popular taste is fickle and uncertain, and it seems to have undergone further change during the last few years, so that whi'e as a means of illustrating scientific or descriptive lectures the use of the optical lantern is largely on the increase, the desire for amusement without much, if any, thought or mental effort seems to be gaining ground amongst general audiences, and something which will raise a laugh or suggest a ludicrous idea is frequently preferred even to a really high-class and elaborate pictorial effect ; a state of things which cannot be denied but can only be deplored. A series of conundrums, for example, thrown upon the screen and followed, after a sufficient interval has been allowed for the exercise of ingenuity in guessing the probable solution, by the answer to the question. One of these precious and edifying productions may be quote] as an example of “how not to do it” :— Query (on one slide): ‘‘ What is that which will go up a stove-pipe down, or down a stovepipe down, but will not go up a stove-pipe up, or down a stove-pipe up?” Answer (on another slide, inserted or brought iuto view when the audience have guessed at the solution to their hearts’ content): ‘An umbrella!” “ Bx wo disce omnes.” Irom the higher regions of elaborate and high-class pictorial effect, “‘O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!” For puerilities such as these, as well as for more serious and important purposes. the single lantern, which but recently would have been ‘regarded as inadequate to the requirements of an exhibition making any pretence to excellence, seems to be once more in favour, and neither skilful dissolving nor elaborate effects appear to be so much in demand as once they were. This may be partly due to the rapidly increasing number of amateur photographers and hunters after ‘‘snapshots,” who desire to display their highly creditable artistic productions by the aid of the lantern, and who are unable or unwilling to produce pictures suitable to be shown as effects, or to provide the high-class and costly instruments and the skilful manipulation required for their successful display. Another cause is doubtless the introduction and extensive use of lamps constructed to consume mineral oils, of the acetylene gases, and of the most powerful of all methods of lantern illumination—-the intensely brilliant electric arc ; none of these lend themselves very readily to use with the dissolving apparatus or in the bi-unial or triple lantern, while the single lantern presents no such difficulty in the way of theiremployment. But whatever the cause may be, the fact is before us, and the popular taste must be reckoned with. The latest development of lantern projection, the kinematograph, with its long series of moving pictures, is too costly, and requires too much previous adjustment and manipulative skill to be undertaken unless on a more extensive and permanent scale than is usually possible to the ordinary exhibitor, whose appliances must be readily placed in position, and as readily removed when no longer required ; while the films are frequently of only temporary and ephemeral interest, and require to be constantly renewed. Since a single film or band of pictures may cost several pounds, and when no longer of immediate interest may become almost valueless, a stock of such films is at once a costly and a hazardous investment. The extreme inflammability of the only material at present available for such films, and the stringent reguJations under which alone the various public | authorities permit their use, also militate greatly against their employment excepting in places of public amusement such as theatres and music halls, where the requisite precautions can be observed, and the necessary installation kept in use day after day, and the pictures continually ptesented to fresh audiences until their interest is at an end; forming perhaps a single item in a varied entertainment. Were it not for these aud similar difficulties, which time and experience may largely overcome, the kinematographic picture, with its wonderful power of bringing before the eye objects as actually seen in motion, or processes as they pass rapidly from stage to stage from commencement to completion, should prove a most valuable means of illustration both of natural phenomena and mechanical processes, as well as of events which once past may not occur again, but “like an unsubstantial pageant faded,” may ‘leave not a wrack behind.”