Movie theater advertisement lantern slide collection, circa 1915

In the era of silent films, lantern slides were used primarily to announce coming attractions, advertise local businesses and services, to give code of conduct announcements, upcoming programs, which were to entertain the audience while film reels were being changed on the projector. Film scholar Lisa Kernan writes that these magic lantern slides were “projected between features, much like today’s slides of local restaurant advertising and movie trivia quizzes.” There were also emergency procedure slides in case of a film catching on fire or other common catastrophe. To bring customers into theaters sometimes short films were made showing the local community or contests such as in this collection where photographs of people walking on the street were projected and free theater tickets were given to people in the theater who saw themselves in the photographs.