Do you have a box of forgotten photographic slides at the back of a cupboard? Or an old projector, gathering dust?
My brother and I recently discovered that our dad’s Noris Trumpf projector, in its original case, still works after 50 years!
In the 1950s and ’60s, the slide projector, a cool bit of kit, had a huge impact on communal entertainment and making memories mid-century. Its starring role in the history of photography is often forgotten these days, when you can shoot and view a film on your smartphone.
Slides, originally painted and viewed through ‘magic lanterns’, have existed since the 16th century. In 1850, a slide containing a photographic image was created by the Langenheim brothers – only ten years after the invention of photography. Then the major update came in 1936 with the first Kodachrome 35mm colour slide.
The all-important projector, also developed in the 1930s, wasn’t commercially available until the 1950s, when it became immensely popular with families and was invaluable for educational purposes.
My father loved the latest photographic gear, and we all loved watching ourselves magnified on a screen in vivid, true-to-life colour. It was like being at the cinema! As a family ritual, this way of sharing and reliving good times was much more fun than handing round prints.
Simple to operate, the projector could still trip you up, but it was all part of the entertainment. The slide had to be placed in a holder, upside down to correct the lens inversion, and manually pushed into the light-path – I remember the metallic clicking sound. Sometimes it got stuck or was the wrong way round, because it was hard to see these tiny plastic- or cardboard-framed bits of film with the naked eye.
A more seamless experience came with the rotary cartridge, a brilliant innovation which could feed 80 slides automatically, at the touch of a button. The German version, the Hans Gugelot-designed Carousel-S (pictured), lives on in design books and museums, thanks to its beautiful, minimalist lines. Kodak Eastman sold over 35 million carousel projectors, the last one being manufactured in 2004; you can buy these and other models on eBay today.
These time machines enabled people to share their memories and their lives, like social media today, only with smaller audiences. A favourite subject was holidays, especially foreign ones, as tourism had boomed since the war and more of us were going abroad.
In the end, and rather unfairly, the slide show became a byword for bored, post-prandial ennui, as you yawned your way through your neighbour’s third visit to the Costa Brava and umpteen shots of his wife sipping vino tinto.
In the end, and rather unfairly, the slide show became a byword for bored, post-prandial ennui, as you yawned your way through your neighbour’s third visit to the Costa Brava and umpteen shots of his wife sipping vino tinto.
The heyday was over. In the late 1960s, my dad bought a Super 8 cine camera. In 1972, my wedding was filmed and shown through a newfangled movie projector. Then along came video, computer and digital technology for homes, schools and offices.
Oh, the nostalgia, looking back at this old way of sharing photos and preserving family history! You can digitise your slides now or buy a small viewer online for under £20 – but it’s not the same.
So, a pilgrim to the past, I’m off to organise a slide show with my vintage projector.
Pamela Howarth
