We still give visual presentations as we have done for over four decades, using a slide projector, and hope that our trusty Kodak Carousel machine will continue to give excellent service until we move fully to PowerPoint-type programming.
There are other types of slide projectors and, before them, there were machines that showed film strips and glass plate images.
Even before all that, there were instruments known as lantern slide projectors - where the light source was either electrical or, in an early form that is hard for some people to believe, a high intensity oil lamp.
This is certainly not a comprehensive history of this technology, but it illustrates the basic chronology to today's new systems.
All of this is a preamble to the story of a show in New Westminster in 1888 that was apparently a lantern slide presentation of large format images in a very large room. This "slide show" took place in the Herring Opera House, which used to stand on Carnarvon Street near Sixth Street.
This was a privately owned 'opera house' theatre venue that could seat an audience of many hundreds of people.
The presentation itself would have been very exciting to see, as it was a display from the Canadian Pacific Exhibition Company with a series of views that "embrace all the landscape wonders of this continent from Montreal to Victoria on the line of the CPR."
The newly arrived Canadian Pacific Railway knew that the scenery their trains travelled through would be a major promotional item and so photos were taken of the route and this 1888 presentation is undoubtedly one of the showings.
Imagine this: "the audience was led with pleased acquiescence through the beauties of the North Shore and Lake Superior route; swept across the vast prairie region, with a glimpse of its beautiful lake scenery; conducted through the heart of the Rockies and across the crest of the Selkirks; until one was relieved to find that he had, at last, reached the Royal City of Westminster."
The showing was a hit that was held over for another evening. "We make no vain boast when we say that no other railroad on the continent can present so glorious a panorama to the tourist or pleasure seeker."
The images, as we can well imagine, were overwhelming and most certainly for its time, quite amazing to witness.
The reporter went on: "The eye and fancy are ever relieved from monotony by the ever changing, ever pleasing kaleidoscopic visions unfolded, and to many the journey is a veritable passage through fairy land."
That this would be a very successful run of programs was predicted by the press: "-(the views) will be appreciated wherever exhibited, as they afford not only valuable instruction but a very pleasant evening's pastime as well."
This was most assuredly a very exciting, innovative entertainment in early New Westminster.
