Mechanical Rackwork Magic Lantern Slide: Turn Crank Fish Swim in Ornate Aquarium For Sale

Wood-Mount Magic Lantern Glass Rackwork Slide, 19th CenturyItem description is keyed to the numbered images above.The word WATERMARK does not appear on the actual slide or slides.
Images 1 - 4:The slide measures 4.4” x 7” (9” including crank). It is half an inch thick. The glass is without cracks; there is a crack in the wood-mount, but it does not affect the operation of the crank, which turns very smoothly.Rackwork magic lantern slides were one of the more ingenious ways the nineteenth-century came up with to project a moving image before the invention of motion pictures. The slides were comprised of two circular panes of glass, one stationary, one free-moving with gear teeth along the circumference that engaged with a pinion turned by a crank in the slide’s wooden frame.Rackwork slides were frequently chromotropes - AKA artificial fireworks - (a kind of projectable kaleidoscope) but any image inviting repetitive circular motion - bees swarming around a hive, planets circling a sun, a windmill’s turning vanes, or a swimming school of pampered fish who appear to live in an aquarium straight out of the Crystal Palace - might appear as a subject.Images 5 - 12:The slide with its crank in various positions.This is one of 25 lantern-slide sales ending within 25 minutes of each other. We combine shipping on multiple lots.