Magic Lantern Slides

One of the facts that is often quoted about the formation of the Geographical Association's origins is that is was founded in part because of the desire for teachers to share resources in the form of lantern slides, which were accompanied by lesson materials. The GA worked with a company called the Diagram Company, which started by loaning slides, and moved on to selling them. I have a few lantern slides, which are not of any great age, and there used to be a large selection down in the warehouse at Solly Street for a while. Some of these were donated by Presidents, such as Vaughan Cornish, and others. H J Fleure and his assistant in the library also used to coordinate the loan of these slides from Aberystwyth (see Fleure's entry for more details)
A later blog post will outline some of the work that this company did, and influences on Pedagogy.

There are some connections here with the Royal Geographical Society once again, of course, as they also have a large collection of lantern slides.
Emily Hayes has been researching the different views on the use of magic lantern slides, which mirror some of the debates currently being had around the use of traditional and progressive pedagogies.

I am grateful to Emily for sending me a copy of her paper, which made good reading. The events here predate the blog largely, as they took place in the run up to the formation of the Association in 1893, but the role of the RGS is mentioned.


The role of women within the RGS was significant of course, as previous blog posts have outlined.

Emily's thesis broadens out the use of lantern slides into the 1920s, but from the title and synopsis focusses on the role of the RGS rather than the Geographical Association.
The chapters below explore how these innovations in visual technologies and practices arose, how they circulated knowledge and their effect on geographies of geographical knowledge making. By harnessing the lantern the RGS attracted an expanding and diversifying audience demographic. The thesis demonstrates the interactive nature of RGS lantern-slide lectures and audiences' important role in shaping the Society’s practices and geographical knowledge. The chapters below argue that it was via the use of the lantern that geography was disseminated to new places. The thesis therefore brings additional perspectives and dimensions to understandings of the circulation of geographical knowledge.
Read more at https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/23096#PSdvQPc7baSCXDiL.99

I read about the way that slides turned some lectures into a type of 'performance', the forerunner to the Powerpoint driven sessions that many of us will have given, or sat through.




COVIC is the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee. It was set up in 1902, and lasted through the First World War. Mackinder was associated with its work.



As Emily goes on to say:

"The Map Room accepted lantern-slide donations from 1888. 543 Donations increased from 1892-93 when the GA was founded.  The Society advertised the fact that it was seeking to acquire lantern-slides in the Year Books throughout the late 1890s. From 1918 Fellows or their executors, family and friends offered the sale of lantern-slide collections to the RGS."

When following up on this, I came across reference to an article by Professor Joan Schwarz, which sounded like it might be useful. I contacted Joan, who works at the Queens University in Ontario, Canada and she kindly sent me a copy of the article, and showed interest in the blog project.
More on this to come in a future blog post.



References
Emily Hayes: 'Geographical light: the magic lantern, the reform of the Royal Geographical Society and the professionalisation of geography c.1885-1894
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748817300427

Thesis:
https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/23096

Fleure, H. J. “SIXTY YEARS OF GEOGRAPHY AND EDUCATION. A RETROSPECT OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION.” Geography, vol. 38, no. 4, 1953, pp. 231–264. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40564702.

C. Herbert, Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination In The Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 153-54 and 262-5; Driver, Geography Militant; and Withers, Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth-century British geography, 167-179.

Ryan 'On visual Instruction' in
The Nineteenth-century Visual Culture Reader

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JAuPcgxiT0QC&lpg=PA149&ots=1Klyeu0FxB&dq=canadian%20high%20commission%20COVIC&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=canadian%20high%20commission%20COVIC&f=false

MACKINDER, H. J. “THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY FROM AN IMPERIAL POINT OF VIEW, AND THE USE WHICH COULD AND SHOULD BE MADE OF VISUAL INSTRUCTION.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 6, no. 2, 1911, pp. 79–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40554112

Image: Lantern Slide from my collection, image CC licensed by Alan Parkinson

Update
You can buy a postcard set of lantern slide images from the GA shop.