Palms on the Move: Magic Lantern slide shows for the PPIE

From Branson DeCou collection, U.C. Santa Cruz.
This is advertising the "Bowls of Joy".

Branson DeCou was a photographer and travelogue lecturer who travelled the world from 1911 to 1941.

I ran across one of his PPIE slides on a somewhat sketchy Russian website. Luckily it had the "Courtesy Special Collections, U.C. Santa Cruz" so I eventually tracked it down to UCSC.

The DeCou collection of 8000 slides has about 70 of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. They are incredible.

I don't know if any of Branson DeCou's pictures were shown prior to the PPIE opening.

But there were some lantern slide shows to advertise the PPIE prior to opening.

A PPIE lantern slide show might have been shown in a place like this photo:

from Art History and Technology

The lantern slides could have been shown using a stereopticon viewer which was really just a fancy way of having one image transition nicely into another image.

We do this all the time with Powerpoint now and with many fancy transitions.

A lot of people think that a stereopticon creates a 3D image, but a stereopticon only shows a 2D picture. (They are thinking of stereograph viewers.)

Frederick Vining Fisher was the official head of the Exposition Lecture Bureau for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. (p. 114, vol. 2).

Frederick Vining Fisher booklet

References

Branson DeCou collection at U.C. Santa Cruz of 8000 lantern slides including a PPIE collection. You can download them into a powerpoint presentation. It's a bit tricky. Instructions below.
DeCou Dream Pictures
Branson DeCou biography from the OAC. Comment is misleading. There are online pictures available, just not in OAC.
According to the biography "The fabulous Panama Pacific International Exposition of San Francisco's 1915 World's Fair attracted an enormous number of visitors, including Branson DeCou, who in a series of photographs recorded the Fair's night effects so effectively that they were brought to the attention of Underwood and Underwood, a leading American photographic concern, for publication. The wide circulation of these images encouraged DeCou to begin his own work in travelogue lecturing, allying his interests in travel and photography. He embarked in a field that was widely popular at the time as a form of entertainment and education. "
"In each venue the travelogue was illustrated with an average of 150 hand-colored lantern slides and the images synchronized to music. He called his shows "Dream Pictures" and advertised them as a "fascinating new form of entertainment." His promotional brochures exclaimed "with the aid of the dissolving shutter and double stereopticon exquisitely colored slides are projected perfectly synchronized to the music of the masters reproduced on the Victrola, the combination of the two inspiring emotions.""
Frederick Vining Fisher booklet
Magic Lantern Societ y "Often called a “stereopticon show,” Magic lantern shows were the combination of projected images, live narration, and live music that preceded the movies. They were incredibly popular 100 years ago." "They were so-called “illustrated lectures,” that is, lectures on travel, science, religion, etc., “illustrated” with a lantern and slides that added a dramatic entertainment quality to the discourse, creating a kind of “edutainment” much like our modern Discovery Channel or Nova. Most of the performers were local people—teachers, ministers, fraternal leaders, and neighborhood amateurs—their audiences small to mid-sized. But there were also semi-professional and professional showmen, regional stars and national superstars who performed before very large audiences."
Wikipedia
youtube of McAllister magic lanterns
Understanding the Magic Lantern

Instructions for downloading UCSC magic lantern slides:

Be sure to check the usage rules depending on how you use them. You might need to contact the library for permission.

Start here. Display them all on one page to make it easier.