The Magic Lantern at the Turn of the 19th Century, Phillip Roberts (Wuthering Bytes 2016)
Channel: AB Open
Date: 2017-08-16

A short history of the magic lantern at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. At this time the magic lantern was one of the most important modes of disseminating images and was a key part of a transformation in visual storytelling that took in a wide range of media and cultural formations. At the end of the 18th century the lantern was used as an entertainment device by traveling entertainers and in a variety of small-scale exhibitions in the home, at fairs and other small venues. It had a low reputation as a device of itinerants and charlatans, having long since lost its association with experimental science.

The lantern market began to change in the first few decades of the 19th century as the lantern was taken up by new manufacturers and sold as a consumer novelty to the increasingly affluent middle classes. This forced a transformation in the lantern market that coincided with a wider series of changes in visual media, as devices such as the kaleidoscope and thaumatrope, and exhibitions such as the panorama, cosmorama and eidoranium, expanded optical media into new modes of exhibition and consumerism. This had the effect of shifting these forms of visual media away from popular storytelling traditions towards a new consumer culture driven by middle class spending habits.

This is drawn from analysis of material artefacts held in the National Media Museum, Science Museum, Bill Douglas Museum and elsewhere. My work addresses the clustering of different forms of media into constellations of materials and practices. I will show that there is no history of the magic lantern (or of scientific instruments, optical media, popular exhibitions or consumer toys), but rather many multi-stranded histories that connect and intertwine and cluster about particular historical moments.

* Phillip Roberts is a researcher working with the National Media Museum and University of York. He is writing a history of the magic lantern in the 19th century, aiming to show the many interrelated causes of the late-century lantern industry and its ongoing effects on visual media over the following decades. He is currently cataloguing and documenting a large collection of slides, lanterns and other objects at the National Media Museum, most of these for the first time. His research aims to develop a more detailed understanding of the magic lantern in the 19th century and provide a nuanced understanding of the operations of historical media systems and their interrelation with other cultural spheres.

Phillip has published work in Film History, Cultural Politics, The Magic Lantern and Early Popular Visual Culture and is the editor of two special issues on media culture.