EMTS Centennial Exhibit: Gallery: Lantern Slides

Lantern Slides

The oldest lantern slides I have been able to find were huge -- 8x10s! Like all lantern slides, the image was sandwiched inbetween two fairly substantial pieces of glass. They were used basically the same way as our current slides, as a way to project visual information for a group. Lantern slides held a remarkable amount of visual detail for their time, but lacked color and were NOT particularly easy to use. Lantern slide projectors were made of cast iron and wer typically over a yard in length. When you look at the projectors in the images below, remember that the slides are an eighth of an inch thick and about 3x4 inches! These factors, and their fragility, all contributed to their ultimate failure as an educational technology, although they seemed to endure in use for astronomers longer than they did in the health sciences. Nowadays, you tend to find them in creative art projects and antique stores more often than the use for which they were intended.

A Typical Lantern Slide Showing Anatomical Details on a Skull. Note that the Publisher is McIntosh! "Alas, poor McIntosh, I knew thee well ... ".	Another Lantern Slide Showing Surgical Knots. Approximately Actual Size.
Lantern Slide Projector
Lantern Slide Storage Box and Peripherals. Kodachrome 2x2 Slides are included to give a sense of scale.	One of the Really Old 8x10 Lantern Slides. See Text Description of Content.