Magic Lantern Slides of Uncle Tom's Cabin

I was interested to discover the existence of the earliest form of group cinema, magic lantern shows. A magic-lantern is, quite simply, the first slide projector. It was invented in the 1650s, but by the end of the 17th century, wandering lanternists were putting on small shows using a lantern lit with a single small candle.

Terry Borton, producer of the American Magic-Lantern Theater, writes "By it's heyday at the end of the nineteenth century, magic-lanterns were everywhere -- in homes, in churches, in fraternal lodges, in schools, in large-scale halls and theaters, and as a regular part of home and public entertainment. Lanterns came in all sizes and shapes, from toy lanterns for children, to those used in large halls -- huge brass-and-mahogany, double-lens machines lit with "limelight." The limelight was created when oxygen and hydrogen were squirted on a piece of limestone which turned incandescent once the gases were lit, and produced a light as powerful as that in a modern movie projector. The lantern projected hand-colored slides on a full-sized screen. The slides -- many of them animated or capable of exotic special effects -- changed every 30 seconds or so, and illustrated stories and songs and comedy, just as the movies would later. In America, the foremost magic-lantern artist was Joseph Boggs Beale, who produced 1600 images for the lantern. As the slides were projected in a theatrical magic-lantern show, a live showman and musician provided the "soundtrack," and the audience joined in creating sound effects, playing horns and tambourines, and clapping, cheering, and booing, just as in the melodramatic theater of the day. "

Once moving pictures appeared on the scene, magic lantern shows quickly fell into obscurity and were used primarily in educational and lecture circuits, much in the way that we use the modern slide projector. Prior to the appearance of moving pictures, though, the popularity of magic lantern shows could have been used as powerful tools, but both the abolitionist and pro-slavery camps. It comes as no surprise that Stowe's enormously popular novel was translated into this medium as early as September, 1853. Check the previous blog entry for some images of Uncle Tom's Cabin magic lantern slides created by Joseph Boggs Beale. I am struck with how Beale draws the slaves with a great deal more sensitivity than many of the popular illustrators whose images we've had occasion to see. He doesn't seem exploit the racial stereotypes of the day with the same vigor of some of his contemporaries.