Image projection! exhibition - Exhibition room texts Munaé Musée national de l Education - Rouen Image projection!
From the old, mysterious magic lantern to the slides of the 20 th century, the exhibition looks back over the changes in techniques and customs in the art of image projection. These bright images were said to have entertaining, scientific and, above all, educational qualities. Used in the popular lectures that took place during the Belle Époque, they suffered heavy competition from the emerging film industry. But not to worry: new life was breathed into the light image in the 1950 s with filmstrips and slides To find out more: follow the guide! Over 200 works on show: Lantern slides, still photographs on glass, old projectors, filmstrips and slides, all brought out of the shadows for the exhibition. Multimedia systems: The exhibition will include multimedia systems to help visitors explore the museum s collections in greater depth. Hands-on experiences: Visitors will be able to activate lanterns and take on the role of the peddler or projectionist for a moment and try out all the features of the projection apparatus. Workshops and tours for groups of children and adults A collaborative publication (in French only) In this 104-page illustrated book, specialists show how image projection was used as a teaching aid during the popular lectures held during the 19 th century, when they appeared in public for the first time, and, later, when they were used more widely in classrooms during the 20 th century. Organizer: Anne Quillien, Curator and researcher at the MUNAÉ Assistant organizer: Patrice Guérin, collector. In partnership with the Robert Lynen film library and the Ecrire une histoire nouvelle de l Europe excellence cluster. The exhibition is organized into 8 sections on a chronological and themed basis.
Exhibition room texts From magic lantern to slide: still image projection as an educational aid Projection takes place in the dark and consists of showing an image on a large scale, transposed on to a flat surface, where it appears magnified by the light. Still image projection made its first appearance in the 17 th century with the magic lantern and was first used for entertainment or scientific purposes. It was not until the 19 th century that it began to be used for educational purposes and from then on went through several stages of development up to the recent slide that many of use still remember... 1. The magic lantern, the lantern of fear The magic lantern was born in the 17 th century as an optical tool, but it soon emerged from the privacy of the physics lab and was used as a form of amusing or frightening entertainment. At the time, only candles and oil lamps were available to offer a small amount of light once night had fallen. The magic lantern, topped by its smoking flue, projected large colourful, wavering images into the darkness. It was a curiosity for spectators, who did not know how it worked. On squares and street-corners, or sometimes invited into the privacy of a family gathering, it offered wonderful spectacles that were advertised by the cry of the lantern operator as he arrived on foot in the village: See the wonders of the magic lantern! The person showing the images was an itinerant peddler whose strong Savoy or Auvergne accent often betrayed his origins. A large number of illustrations show him wandering the country with his lantern on his back. He carried fragile hand-painted glass plates, the images often grotesque or entertaining, which he projected and animated on a wall or a sheet and added comments, sometimes accompanied by a hurdy-gurdy or an organ. Alongside this, from 1798, a very popular spectacle of a new kind, launched by Robertson in Paris, began to develop in auditoriums: phantasmagoria. The phantoscope, a more elaborate lantern sometimes mounted on wheels, was hidden among the audience and projected fantastic, frightening figures on to black sheets or walls of smoke 2. Lanterns become part of family life From the mid-19 th century, the magic lantern became more widely used and entered middle-class homes. Manufacturers began making tin-plate lanterns that were inexpensive if produced in large quantities. In France, Lapierre and Aubert produced toy lanterns for family use. They were made for children and were soon to be seen in the windows of the department stores that emerged in the second half of the 19 th century. The transparent plates were also produced industrially: hand-painted scenes were replaced by mass-produced scenes using the techniques of the time: lithographic transfer, transfer printing then chromolithography (colour lithography). Horizontal glass plates contained several scenes that were viewed one after the other. Stories, which were traditionally passed on orally, were a favourite subject for these projected images as they were ideal for narration. These transparent tales echoed a well-established popular culture. Their very structure often used the narrative divisions of popular imagery which, in 12 concise and briefly commented vignettes, told well-known long stories and legends: Charles Perrault s tales of Mother Goose, the story of de Geneviève de Brabant or Florian s fables
3. Projection for educational purposes A new, educational use for projection was introduced in the second half of the 19 th century, as education through the eyes developed. Images had previously been little used in teaching, but their educational benefits were recognized at this time. From magical, image projection became educational. As primary education, ending at the age of twelve, was considered insufficient, the Government introduced popular lectures and evening classes to try and extend people s education. Projection offered an instructive distraction that was well suited to lessons for adults, which aimed to be less academic. Projection lanterns developed, along with photographic slides, under the influence of philanthropic people s education societies which lent them to teachers and lecturers who asked for them. In 1896, the Government gave considerable impetus to the movement by setting up a image projection department in its Educational Museum. It organized the distribution of series of photographic slides, which circulated free of charge across the whole country in solid wooden boxes, to be used by state primary school teachers. As the teachers did not always have the knowledge required to comment on these encyclopaedic slides, the Educational Museum gradually drew up a set of notes for each series that could be read out loud. 4. Photographs on glass and paper: images for teaching With the development of image projection, photographs on glass and paper for teaching purposes were produced in larger quantities and offered teachers and lecturers a broad iconographic collection to choose from. The invention of photography, then of positive printing on glass led to the development of photographic plates to be used for projection also known as glass slides which were soon used widely in further education. Botany, hygiene, zoology, agriculture, the history of France, French colonies and regions or world exhibitions, etc.: with these glass slides, people were able to see things that they had never seen before. Even enlarged by projection, they offered a new accuracy and realism that was particularly well suited to object lessons or geography lessons. In the middle of the industrial and colonial era, these glass slides were a window on the world. A favourite educational aid, glass slides were a real success, but they were still heavy and fragile. Paper images obtained by lithographic printing and made transparent by varnishing appeared during the last few years of the 19 th century. But they were of lesser quality and appear to have been less widely used. Launched by the Après l école magazine, then also published by Maison Mazo, paper images came on sheets that the teacher had to cut out and place in cardboard frames or under glass in order to project them. What vision of the world in 1900? Europe, between 1880 and 1910 can be seen through the hundreds of images in the Colbert Collection. This photographic collection was set up over a century ago in response to public curiosity at the time of the first wave of globalization, with the world exhibitions of 1889 and 1900 in Paris, the internationalization of the business world and the mass emigration of Europeans to America or the colonies. Showing Europe and its extensions was perceived as both a necessity and an educational requirement. The photographic collection is therefore organized into different geographical areas: France and its various landscapes, neighbouring Europe Germany, England, Belgium and more distant
Europe such as the Balkan countries, which the Europeans got to know as a result of their political instability and the conflicts that took place there, its colonial extensions, through images that combined exoticism with a civilizing mission, and America. Then collection also gives a view of the life of the Europeans: the busy city streets, the monuments, the countryside, daily life, commerce and industry, cultural, political and religious activities, and war, through the objects and infrastructures used to prepare for it. We can thus see a glimpse of the possible arguments to be heard at the lectures given at the Lycée Colbert, in Paris, during the Belle Époque. But the wealth of documentary evidence in this outstanding collection is an invitation to historians to reconstruct its architecture and examine it in a new light. 5. Apparatus and manufacturers The projection lantern to be used to project glass slides during lectures and in schools was developed from the 1870s. A number of manufacturers were attracted by this promising market and worked to develop their apparatus models - and various accessories of whose performance they spoke highly. The projection lantern was an impressive apparatus made of black sheet metal and generally fitted with a brass lens. It had a deliberately austere appearance in order to distinguish it from the magic lantern and make it look more scientific. These lanterns were an invaluable aid to teachers and lecturers, but they were relatively expensive and complicated to use, and the light source, at a time when electricity had not yet been brought to the schools, was often difficult to control. A very powerful light was needed to project an image in front of a large audience. Consequently, the development of lighting systems, from oil lamps to electric bulbs not forgetting the inevitable paraffin lamp- became a major part of the effort to improve the apparatus. Molteni, Mazo or La Bonne Presse: a large number of manufacturers often offered much more than just lanterns; some of them published extensive series of images to project, while others produced theoretical manuals or technical reviews aimed at amateur projectionists. 6. Scientific projection Lanterns were invented as an optical tool and were long confined to the physics laboratory. In the 19 th century, far from being used only to project photographic images, the projection lantern also took up its place among the scientific instruments to be found in the grammar school physics laboratories. Developed in the 17 th century by the physicist Christian Huygens or by Kircher, the lantern also took up its place in the physics laboratory of Abbé NOLLET, who, in 1768, provided one of the first illustrations of one in his Leçons de Physique Expérimentale. The lantern is featured alongside a solar microscope, which used the sun as a light source for enlarging its images. From the early 19 th century, precision instrument manufacturers and opticians built projection apparatus for scientific use that used powerful light sources such as the electric arc or the oxhydrogen burner. The Duboscq lantern, built in 1850, is a significant example. These scientific projection lanterns gradually took up their place in many grammar school physics laboratories. Combined with optical benches (magnifying glasses, mirrors and prisms), they were used to study the main optical and physical phenomena such as the decomposition of light; fitted with a microscope or various tanks and containers, they were intended to observe the infinitely small on a large scale or were used for a variety of physics, chemistry or natural science experiments to help make the concepts easier to teach.
7. Still or animated: still image projection facing competition from the emerging film industry Still images remained unchallenged in the world of educational projection until the 1910s, but was then called into question with the development of an innovative system: the animated image. Cinema was invented in 1895, showing moving images capable of representing movement and giving the impression of life. It was identified from the 1910s as having considerable potential as a teaching aid. Two major French companies, Pathé and Gaumont, began producing documentary films for teaching purposes. These black-and-white films were just a few minutes long and sometimes tinted; they were still silent and often contained subtitles that combined text with images. Teachers took their pupils to see these films in a cinema or procured them from the Educational Museum or the offices of the educational cinema that organized their distribution from the 1920s. However, the teaching profession showed a certain mistrust of these film projections and were critical of their rapidity. The films were too fast-moving, did not give the teacher time to comment on the image as he wished and partially dispossessed him of his role as an educator. Films and still images therefore continued to co-exist as a result of their respective advantages: the still image had the ability to capture the pupil s attention and allow the teacher to speak, while the animated image was able to show life and movement. Hybrid projection apparatus was used to project films and still images and is evidence that both were used in education. 8. Filmstrips and slides: the golden age of still image projection in education Still images on a flexible medium, filmstrips then slides, gradually replaced the fragile photographic images on glass and became well established in classrooms at all levels. Widely used from the 1950s up to the arrival of digital technology, they represented a real golden age of still image projection in education. Filmstrips, a succession of still images on a notched roll of 35 mm film, appeared in the 1920s. They were hard-wearing, took up little space and could contain several dozen still images that the teacher showed one by one on a screen. Photographs, drawings, maps and explanatory diagrams could be shown in black-and-white or colour. The images were interspersed with subtitles, captions or numbers often referring to accompanying notes provided by the publishers. Filmstrips were widely used from the 1950s, when the Government granted subsidies to schools to allow them to buy small electrical projectors that were cheap and easy to handle. As a result, most schools had several small projectors used to accompany teaching in subjects such as science, technology, childcare, history or geography. However, these small rolls of images imposed a pre-established order that teachers may have found restrictive. They soon preferred using slides, which were introduced into France in the 1940s. Here, the images could be used separately from each other. Projectors were initially fitted with holders for both filmstrips and slides, but slides eventually won the day and remotecontrolled automatic slide holders were invented.