Trevor Beattie is a magic lantern showman and researcher based in Hove, Sussex.

 

His shows use original lanterns and slides to re-create the popular optical entertainments of Victorian times. This Website gives a flavour of the shows and the topics he researches.

 

The magic lantern is an early slide projector which displayed brightly coloured, moving and transforming images long before the birth of the cinema.

 

Before the invention of photography the slides were beautifully hand painted, often including mechanical movements and magical dissolve sequences.

 

Many early photographs took the form of lantern slides which the Victorians used to produce educational, religious and comic series, including life model stories, the forerunner of today’s soap operas.

 

The first magic lanterns were produced in the 1650s but their heyday was the nineteenth century, which is the period covered by Trevor’s shows.

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Examples of Trevor's shows can be found HERE