August 01, 2004
#174 :: Magic Lantern Slide - Protozoa
Perhaps a relic from a turn-of-the-(20th)-century high school biology class, this glass slide shows microbes rendered in all their hairy, magnified glory. One could have seen a similar view in that day by putting a slideful of pond water under a good microscope - and in better color and detail. But at some point, the information merchants of the era saw the profit in freezing those images in watercolor rendered on a sheet of glass. Students would need to be taught what to look for ahead of time, given a visual grip on single-cell organisms before diving in on their own. Teachers would need to reach dozens, even hundreds of students at once. The magic lantern - after the printing press - was a seminal discovery in the science of mass communications.