Long before the invention of photography…

Long before the invention of photography, magic lanterns (lit by candles or oil lamps) were used to project hand-painted slides onto walls or screens. Itinerant lantern operators, traveling from town to town with their apparatuses on their backs, were familiar figures by the late 1600s. In the later nineteenth century, manufacturers of lanterns and slides targeted the domestic market. At home, amateurs and children could replicate the experience of public lectures, narrating stories and conjuring visual illusions.