Posted 12 years ago
Novice
(1 item)
Children's toy magic lantern projector, designed for domestic use with miniature glass slides. Consisting of a box containing a lantern, illuminant and a set of twelve strip slides. Each slide, containing a series of images, would be slid through the slide holder. The illuminant could possibly be a candle or a paraffin or similar burner.
Ernst Plank, the manufacturer was founded in 1866 and produced tin toy trains and boats, as well as magic lanterns. At one time it was the second largest manufacturer of magic lanterns in Nuremberg, Germany. Nuremberg was a major centre for metal toy production and export in the latter part of the 19th century and up to World War I.
While the invention of the magic lantern is generally seen to be in the 17th century, its greatest popularity as an optical projector spans the late 18th Century to the early decades of the 20th Century. It was used both as a means of entertainment and education.
This lantern projector set is part of the Francis Collection of pre-cinematic apparatus and ephemera, acquired by the Australian and Victorian Governments in 1975. David Francis was the curator of the National Film and Sound Archive of the British Film Institute as well as being a co-founder of the Museum of the Moving Image in London, which was operational between 1988 and 1999.
Not sure what year was made.