Muddy River Musings: The Stereopticon: PowerPoint of the 19th Century

On June 24, 1871, the Brookline Transcript announced an "Exhibition of Arctic Views" to be shown to "the scholars of the public schools" at Town Hall. The views, from an expedition led by the artist William Bradford, were said to be "highly instructive, as well as entertaining."

One of the Arctic images from William Bradford's travels

The images were displayed using a device known as the stereopticon, sometimes called the "magic lantern," that projected them on a screen behind the speaker. It was a principal way of delivering illustrated lectures in days before motion pictures, and a common late 19th and early 20th century means of illustrating talks on a wide variety of topics.

The stereopticon projected two slightly different images together to give a sense of three dimensions.

This example of a stereopticon projector was in a 1900 advertisement

This illustration shows an example of a 19th century stereopticon presentation in a large theater.

In Brookline, stereopticon lectures were held in various locations, including churches, schools, and meeting halls, as well as the Town Hall. World travel was a popular topic, with illustrated talks on Egypt, Mexico, the Rhine River, Switzerland, and other parts of the world.

Mae Durell Frazar, a writer and organizer of European tours, gave a series of stereopticon lectures in Brookline's Town Hall in 1891.

Robert Luce, a writer and later lieutenant governor and member of Congress, gave a stereopticon lecture on Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition "of equal interest to those who went to the Fair and those who did not."

Early versions of the stereopticon used candles or oil lamps as the source of light, while later versions used chemically-enhanced limelight for more powerful illumination.

Art and culture were other popular topics for local talks illustrated with stereopticon images:

Students from the School of Elocution and the New England Conservatory of Music presented an illustrated reading of Longfellow's "The Courtship of Miles Standish" in Town Hall in 1879.
In 1892, Annie S. Peck, an expert on Greek antiquities, delivered a series of illustrated lectures at the Bethany Building at the corner of Washington and Cypress Streets.

Technology itself was discussed in some talks:

George Hartwell's 1887 talk on "Harnessing Lightning" looked at "the latest, most novel and practical application of electric power." These included lighting -- The Town Hall was lit up with electric lights -- as well as the use of electricity for sewing machines, pumps, and an electric monorail in New Jersey
In 1894, John C. Packard, a longtime science teacher at Brookline High School delivered a talk on the telegraph and the telephone, illustrated (according to the Brookline Chronicle) with an "excellent series of stereopticon views" which "were thrown upon the screen" and "added greatly to the clearness of the lecture."

Other stereopticon-illustrated lectures in Brookline covered social welfare topics, including talks by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and others on temperance, clean water, the work of the Tuskegee Institute, and "the relation of physical training to education."

In 1897, the Chronicle reported on the use of an electric-powered version of the stereopticon at Brookline High School.

"The light furnished is very steady and uniform, and is powerful enough to so compete with daylight that the blinds are left partially open in the lecture room during demonstrations with the stereopticon, thus allowing students to take necessary notes."

The use of stereopticon slides diminished with the advent of motion pictures in the 1910s, but they were still used in occasional lectures in Brookline as later as 1941. They even made an appearance at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in a 1989 presentation by 3-D photography expert Ron Labbe.