Series consists of 4 lantern slides. Slides are views of the Banff Hot Springs, Banff Avenue with Cascade Mountain, Devil's Lake, and the city of Calgary.
Series consists of 4 lantern slides. Slides are views of the Banff Hot Springs, Banff Avenue with Cascade Mountain, Devil's Lake, and the city of Calgary.
Series contains 35 children's magic lantern slides done in colour, machine-printed rather than hand-painted. There are 4 distinct grouping of the slides: 2019.88-1-12 depict the story "The Transvaal War" [manufactured in 1895?]. Each slide has 3 seperate images with black borders and are numbered s…
The Ernst Plank Company (EP) was located in Nerumberg, Germany and operated from 1866 until 1930. The company was known for their production of copper and tin toys, specifically stationary and locomotive toy steam engines and carriages, they also produced a variety of magic lanterns and lantern slides. When they first began producing lantern slides, the standard shape of a slide was a square piece of glass about 8cm x 8cm and, depending on the style of magic lantern being used, may have a wooden frame built around the glass. Styles changed as methods for printing slides and lantern designs advanced – by the 1880’s the wooden frame was removed entirely from the slides and replaced with thin strips of coloured binding tape that protected fingers from the glass edges.
Originally, hand painted black silhouette images on glass or wax paper were used to create projected pictures, followed closely by the use of colour paints to create entire scenes. Printed images soon replaced hand-painted slides, allowing for cheaper production and more widespread use.
A popular format for commercially manufactured lantern slides was a long piece of glass (usually no more than 23cm long) on which multiple images could be printed in order to tell a smoother story. This allowed for two different kinds of display. The first display has smaller pictures printed in circular or square frames with a solid black border and shown as independent images of a larger narrative with pauses in between. The second display option for these slides is as a panoramic scene with the entire area coloured in (or just with figures displayed like on a stage) so they could seamlessly slide from one side to the other.
This long thin kind of slide was ideal for home use and could be easily handled by children. Ernst Plank also produced a toy magic lantern out of lightweight tin that could be lit with a small oil lamp specifically for use by children. Slides meant for that kind of lantern were printed on celluloid or on a single plane of glass with a thin layer of transparent lacquer to protect the image. This created a thinner, more lightweight and less delicate slide ideal for small hands. When a toy magic lantern was purchased it came with 1 or 2 sets (each set consisting of 12 slides) in the lantern’s box, additional sets of a particular theme could be purchased independently.
Magic lanterns varied greatly in design and material depending on the use. Professional showmen would have multi-lens lanterns lit by powerful chemicals or high-voltage lightbulbs that would allow them to project clear images onto a large screen for a theater audience. There were also simpler lanterns that could be powered by oil lamps, multi-wick candles, gas lighting, or electricity in the home. One of the most popular themes for slide shows where images from international travel, but domestic scenes, Christmas, and famous historic battles were also very common.
Scope & Content
Series contains 35 children's magic lantern slides done in colour, machine-printed rather than hand-painted. There are 4 distinct grouping of the slides:
2019.88-1-12 depict the story "The Transvaal War" [manufactured in 1895?]. Each slide has 3 seperate images with black borders and are numbered sequentially so that the showman could keep track. There is no maker's mark, but according to a note placed in the accompanying lantern slide box, this set was made by the Ernst Plank Company. The slides depict protraits of men in various uniforms, battle scenes, and soldiers in uniform. Each silde is bordered with green paper in good condition.
2019.88-13-16 are unrelated EP slides bordered in red paper of varying condition. 13 has 4 travel images seperated with a black border; 14 is a long slide showing 4 boys in play dress as a marching band; 15 is a panoramic sea scape with ships and a harbour. A section of the coloured glass along the top slightly to the left of centre has been chipped off; 16 is a panoramic pastoral Dutch scene set in the springtime. The supporting glass piece has been badly damaged and is missing on the left end of the slide.
2019.88-17-28 are all travel scenes with 4 images to a slide seperated with a black border and no maker's mark. The images contain a mixture of people, animals, buildings and temples (mainly made from stone), boats, and landscapes from North America, Africa (with an emphasis on Egypt), and what could be either South America or Eurasia. All slides are bordered in red paper of fair to good condition.
2019.88-29-35 are unrelated EP slides of various styles bordered in red paper in fair to good condition. 29 depicts 4 caricature portraits with a black border; 30, 32, 34 are long slides with 4 individuals on each that are not seperated from eachother with borders, but are not part of a larger scene; 31, 33, 35 are all panoramic pastoral Dutch scenes set in both springtime and winter.
Notes
Accompanying the slides is what appears to be an original lantern slide box, made of wood and covered in faded purple paper with a steam engine train image on the top and a logo containing the intials "E.P." The logo consists of a 4-spoke wheel with wings on either side and 3 stars above. One short end of the box is missing and the sliding lid is either warped or stuck and does not open. A sticky note placed inside the box states that the green-line lantern slides (2019.88/PS-1 to PS-12) accompanied the box.
Fonds consists of the photographic records and sample materials of Byron Harmon Photos, the photographic business of Byron Harmon and his successors; as well as the personal photographs of Byron Harmon. I. Scenic / commercial, 1907-1975, ca.7600 items. Primary component of series is film and glass…
Byron Hill Harmon, 1876-1942, was a professional photographer and businessman at Banff, Alberta, Canada. He was born near Tacoma, Washington, USA and operated a portrait studio there for a time. In 1903, while travelling around the United States and Canada as an itinerant photographer, he decided to settle in Banff and by 1907 had produced enough mountain views to begin selling a line of postcards. Between 1906 and 1913, Harmon was official photographer for the Alpine Club of Canada and made trips in numerous mountain areas, such as the Bugaboos (1910) and Mount Robson (1911, 1913). Harmon personally financed trips into other areas, such as Tonquin Valley (1918) and Lake of the Hanging Glaciers (1920, 1922), producing both still photographs and motion pictures for commercial sale. After his last major expedition in 1924 across Saskatchewan Glacier, through to Maligne Lake and back to Banff by packtrain, Harmon devoted most of his time to photographing scenes along the railway, skiing in the Assiniboine and Skoki regions, and the annual rides and hikes of the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies and the Sky Line Trail Hikers of the Canadian Rockies. At the same time he managed several businesses, including a drug store, fountain lunch, theatre and book store. In his later years, Harmon spent much time travelling and photographing in other parts of the world. The business, Byron Harmon Photos, was managed successively by his son, Don Harmon, then his grand-daughter, Carole Harmon.
Scope & Content
Fonds consists of the photographic records and sample materials of Byron Harmon Photos, the photographic business of Byron Harmon and his successors; as well as the personal photographs of Byron Harmon.
I. Scenic / commercial, 1907-1975, ca.7600 items. Primary component of series is film and glass negatives, 1907-1942, ca.6500 items. Also includes: postcard negatives and positives and production negatives to ca.1955; original prints; a wide range of sample products, such as postcards, enlargements and framing prints, calendars and viewbooks, mainly by Harmon business, some by other photographers; and lantern slides, ca.1913-192-, pertaining to Columbia Icefield Expedition, mountaineering, mountain landscapes, Indians, wildlife, Canadian Pacific Railway and Asian travel. Scenic / commercial series pertains to annual camps and expeditions of the Alpine Club of Canada in the Canadian Rockies and Selkirks, 1907-1913; private movie-making expeditions in the Canadian Rockies and Selkirks; mountain scenic views, primarily for postcard purposes; Banff events and development; skiing; birds and animals. Includes some material by Don Harmon and Lloyd Harmon, sons of Byron Harmon.
II. Personal, 189- to 194-, ca.370 items. Includes: family photographs and views received from others; motion picture out-takes pertaining to world travels, 1930s; and 35 mm. transparencies, ca.1940, pertaining mainly to world travels, also mountain and prairie scenics.
Notes
For more information on the Byron Harmon photographs, see "Great Days in the Rockies: The Photographs of Byron Harmon, 1906-1934" (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1978) or "Byron Harmon, Mountain Photographer" by Carole Harmon and Bart Robinson (Banff: Altitude Publishing, 1992)
The Archives General File is an artificial collection of accessions which do not constitute separate fonds or collections or cannot be placed within existing fonds or collections. Included in the collection are textual records of many types, such as manuscripts, reports, letters, diaries, speeches…
57 cm textual records. -- 50 cm of photographs : prints. -- 189 photographs (15 framed prints, 51 transparencies, 79 negatives; 44 copy negatives). -- 3 photograph albums (139 prints). -- 6 motion pictures. -- 9 sound recordings
Scope & Content
The Archives General File is an artificial collection of accessions which do not constitute separate fonds or collections or cannot be placed within existing fonds or collections. Included in the collection are textual records of many types, such as manuscripts, reports, letters, diaries, speeches, poetry, plans and others; photographs in the form of prints, negatives, transparencies, albums, postcards, etc.; sound recorded interviews and programmes; and motion pictures. Material pertains broadly to the Banff area and many other areas within the Archives collecting mandate.
Notable items include: Walter Wilcox letter; George Kinney report; interviews with Bill Round and Edward Feuz; original copy of Treaty Number Seven; Mary Schaffer material, including letters, notes, photograph and report; reports on the Nakimu Caves; film pertaining to Banff Winter Carnival; Georgia Engelhard letters and photos; plans for buildings and structures; George Noble photograph; W. S. Park photograph.