Before there were smart phones we had digital cameras. Before digital cameras were film cameras (those too young to have not seen film – it was called that because because pictures were captured on a physical media). Before film, and now we’re outside of my era, there were glass slides that held pictures that could be shown.

Reaching out to the web:

” The lantern slide has its origins in 17th century optical viewing devices which came to be known as “magic lanterns.” The earliest slides for magic lanterns consisted of hand-painted images on glass, projected by itinerant showmen telling stories about the images that were projected….” Source: Magic Lantern Slide Society

Again, pre-dating me, when these first came out there were no movie screens so seeing pictures from elsewhere around the world was quite a novelty and experience. They were generally phased out by the 1940s/1950s as they were replaced by the acetate 35mm film slides.

There exist glass lantern slides for Scouts. One such set we acquired when we bought the Buffalo Scout Museum of Paul and Diana Freitag. Paul had created a wonderful display box of a set he aquired that the council, at the time, was throwing out. We donated the slide display to the Council. It is on display at their council headquarters. It covers the first 25 years of the council including a picture of when Baden-Powell visited the council as well as the early days of Camp Scouthaven. Here’s a quick video we shot of the display.

We recently got in a complete Scout slide set out of Chicago circa 1918 from the John Vacca estate. Some are in black and white but many are in color which again was rare for this era. Here are scans for a few of them.

• » Comments (0)