Magic lantern slide

Manufacturer	Unkown
Name	Cycloidotrope
Place	Great Britain
Date	ca. 1885
Register	00702

The Cycloidotrope is a type of machined glass slide for projecting with a magic lantern. It consists of a glass slide blackened with the soot of a candle, on which a punch fixed to an adjustable gear and moved by a handle scratches the slide and draws geometric figures. The result on the screen is a black background in which a thin white line emerges that traces an infinite variety of geometric shapes. The Cycloidotrope was sold with a wooden box, which, as well as the slide itself and the mechanism of the mobile punch, contained other accessories such as clamps, discs, etc. For an effect with colour, it was recommended to replace the black soot of the candle with coloured collodion with anilines as an alternative coating of the glass slide. No patent for this device has been located, so it is difficult to date its origin. In 1861 a similar device was already on the market, and the name Cycloidotrope appears in 1885.

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