I live in Lancashire in the north west of England. When I was 11 years old, we were on a family holiday in Teignmouth, Devon and my Dad bought a box of colourful, glass slides and an ancient, rusty, ‘magic lantern’ projector from a junk shop. For the next year, I entertained (probably not, in hindsight) my friends and family with stories of Robinson Crusoe and two boys being stung by bees which seemed funny then, less so now. This started a sixty year fascination with early projected images and the remarkable inventions, devices and toys that eventually led to the birth of the movies in 1895. I built a unique collection of lantern slides and early photographs, became a professional showman and lecturer, created a family business based on digitised lantern slide images and wrote over seventy booklets on photographic social history ….. all from a visit to a seaside junk shop in the 1960s ….. it’s a funny old world!
Magic Lantern World 