This blog was featured on our social media's "Museum Mystery Mondays" series.
These are magic lantern slides. Magic lanterns were a type of image projector that first appeared in the 17th century. As an early form of cinema, magic lanterns required a slide and a light source, typically a candle or oil lamp. The slide would be placed upside down in the projector and project itself right side up on the wall, due to the concave mirror inside the lantern. The slides in our collection were most likely used for children, since the magic lantern become a common household toy in the late 19th century. The magic lantern was eventually replaced by the slide projector in the mid-1900s.
Magic Lantern with a slide inserted (Credit: Wiki Commons).