PowerPoint in 1872

By L. J. Marcy. The Sciotopticon Manual, 1872.

The Sciopticon (pronounced Si-op-ti-con), is by far the most convenient and easily managed of any form of Magic Lantern. Its ridge of wide, intensified double flame, lying lengthwise in the axis of the condensing lenses, gives it much greater efficiency than any other lamp-illuminated lantern.

All who have become acquainted with this new instrument, see in it the accomplishment of what has long been greatly desired by those who appreciate the value of visible illustrations as a means of imparting instruction and of affording rational amusement.

Confessedly, the medieval magicians with their lanterne magique effected little good by their incantations and ghostly spectres. But modern educators have higher aims and better means at hand. Their lenses are greatly improved in form and quality. The photographer secures images of all that is interesting or beautiful in nature and art. Literature and the sciences teem with pictorial illustrations, from which choice selections can be easily copied for lantern slides. And now the Sciopticon, with its own peculiar light for all ordinary occasions, and with the oxy-hydrogen light for occasions extraordinary, comes in to show up what is thus made ready.

In form and construction the Sciopticon is very unlike that relic of the middle ages, the old magic lantern. Those who are interested in the philosophy involved in it, in the peculiarities pertaining to it, in the practical management of it, in making and selecting slides for it, in performing scientific experiments with it, and in promoting the interest of education by it — will do well to inquire within.

(From the Internet Archive)