Slide Library - History of Visual Resources Collections

History of Visual Resources Collections

The first American lantern slide collections, developed by museums to reflect and augment their collections, got their start between 1860 and 1879: the American Natural History Museum, the New York State Military Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Winterthur Museum. American colleges and universities began their collections during the same period of time: DePauw University, Columbia University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, University of Rochester. Colleges and university collections were used primarily for classroom instruction.

The first illustrated architectural history course west of the Mississippi was John Galen Howard's Architecture 5A-F at the University of California, Berkeley in 1905. The six-semester course was required for all architecture students, and like other architectural history courses of its time, at MIT and Cornell at least, were multi-year in duration. Of course, the lecture was illustrated by lantern slides. In the U.S., lantern slides generally measured 3"x 4.25".

The 1950s was a period of transition from black and white lantern slides, which heretofore had often been hand colored, to color positive film. Lantern slides were shot directly onto color film, and the 35mm slide (2"x2" with an image of 24mm x 36mm) gained in popularity.

The heyday of the lantern slide lasted one hundred years, more or less, from 1860 to 1960. The reign of the 35mm slide, more or less, was about half as long, fifty years, 1955–2005.