Midnight Sermon in the Observatory: Victorian slides
The Moon, eclipses and the Sun on glass magic-lantern slides from meteorologist Clement Wragge's collection, shared by Auckland Museum.
What it is
Before projectors and slide decks, lecturers showed pictures with a magic lantern, projecting glass slides onto a screen. On this board Auckland Museum shares 44 of them from the collection of Clement Lindley Wragge (1852–1922). According to the board description, Wragge was a British meteorologist who spent his later years in Auckland, founded his own institute and museum there, and is credited with starting the habit of giving cyclones people's names.
Captions are in English and brief: Full Moon, Phases of the Eclipse, Earth and Sun.
Why we picked it
It's the cosmos as a 19th-century audience saw it. A photograph of the Moon taken at Lick Observatory on 22 September 1890 is partly masked with black paper, the lecturer's way of pointing at one region. Next to it you'll find a drawing of the lunar surface with Earth hanging in the distance, diagrams of an eclipse's phases and hand-tinted slides. Many plates show handwriting, scratches and wear, so they feel like small artifacts rather than just old pictures.
The museum lists the images as having no known copyright restrictions.
Where to start
- Find Moon, 22nd September, 1890, Lick Observatory, one of the most striking slides.
- Look at Phases of the Eclipse to see how eclipses were explained to a room without the internet.
- Seek out Drawing of Moon surface with Earth in Distance, an imagined view from the Moon long before spaceflight.
- Compare the photographs with the painted slides and notice where photography still fell short.
Who it's for
Astronomy fans and history-of-science readers, physics teachers, designers after genuine retro-space visuals and anyone who loves early photography.
Quick answers
What is a magic-lantern slide? A glass plate carrying an image that was projected onto a screen during talks.
Whose collection is it? Clement Lindley Wragge's, now held by Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand.
Can I reuse the images? The museum marks them as having no known copyright restrictions.
