Six Exquisite Chromatropes

The diagram was upside down. A ship sailed round a globe, but the tower and lines meant to explain the Earth's curvature had ended up below the useful part of the projected picture. Nobody corrected it. The lecturer did not explain it either.

That was the South Australian Register's account of Henry Kesterton's entertainment in Adelaide, in the British colony of South Australia, on Monday, 17 January 1848. His handbills had promised astronomy followed by twenty pictures and “six exquisite Chromatropes”. Admission cost half a crown, two shillings and sixpence. The reviewer had expected an evening worth the money.

The Register thought the landscapes were well painted, as far as it could tell through their misty appearance. Their light varied uncertainly. The artificial fireworks might have been beautiful, the writer complained, if somebody had exhibited them properly.

Another newspaper, the South Australian, was more forgiving. It praised James Allen's short history of astronomy, acknowledged difficulties with newly opened apparatus and called the concluding chromatropes charming.

Kesterton projected the pictures.

Allen delivered the lecture. Between them, they had to make small pieces of glass become a public spectacle: planets moving, landscapes changing and coloured patterns continually rearranging themselves. Kesterton owned the apparatus; Allen would soon insist that he needed more say in its operation.

A picture with a handle

A magic lantern sent light through a transparent picture and projected an enlarged image onto a screen. Condenser lenses concentrated the illumination through the slide; the objective at the front formed the distant picture. Moving the objective brought it into focus. The projection inverted the image, so the glass had to enter in the corresponding orientation.

Dark paint stopped the light. Transparent colour filtered it. A black surround could make a figure appear on its own, without a bright rectangle announcing the edges of the glass. Painting for projection meant making a small surface bear enlargement. An 1888 handbook warned that a picture little more than three inches across might be shown ten or twelve feet wide. A rough detail would grow with everything else.

In a lever slide of a drinking horse, the animal's body and its surroundings stayed on a fixed glass. Its head and neck were painted on a second disc, which turned through part of a circle. The neck had to meet the centre of rotation. Raising or lowering the lever brought the head down to the water and up again.

A windmill needed a complete turn. Its building could remain on the fixed glass while the sails revolved on another. A small toothed wheel, the pinion, engaged a toothed ring around the moving disc. The crank drove the pinion; the sails followed it round. A thin ring of paper or cardboard kept the glasses from rubbing together.

The chromatrope used this motion to make changing geometry. Two glass discs carried coloured designs. With both turning in opposite directions, the spokes, curves and coloured spaces kept moving across one another. Openings appeared and closed; new combinations formed while the underlying paintings remained the same.

The handle controlled how the pattern developed.

Some chromatropes used a band running between a handwheel and the glass assembly. Others put the discs in toothed rings, worked by a pinion. The surviving Museums Victoria example has double rackwork inside its wooden mount. Its designs were hand painted over printed outlines; making the colour did not necessarily mean drawing every line afresh.

The 1888 guide recommended bright, radiating or spiral designs, painted in matching pairs. Different sets could be fitted to one frame. The operator varied the speed by turning the handle, and could change direction or stop. There was no strip of pictures determining how many seconds the effect must last.

The attraction could also carry a message. An earlier guide, published under the name A Mere Phantom, described chromatropes with central fountains or windmills, and others announcing Welcome, Adieu or Good Night. Revolving colour could introduce a show or help to finish it.

A closer look · 13:18 · English

Glass pictures in motion

Play film

Changing the light

Kesterton's programme also promised dissolving views. These required another kind of coordination. Two lanterns projected onto the same area of screen. As one picture faded, another appeared in its place.

The two pictures had to coincide.

A later surviving pair of Newton & Co. lanterns used a fan-shaped shutter between their fronts. The operator moved it to obscure one beam while uncovering the other. In the lantern whose light had been shut off, the next picture could be prepared without the audience watching the change.

Summer and winter views made the effect easy to follow. Buildings and landscape held their positions while foliage gave way to snow. If the slides were badly aligned, the architecture would shift during the transition. The operator had to establish the position of each picture before beginning the show.

A Mere Phantom advised a private trial of newly bought slides. Pictures needed marks indicating how far into the holder they should go, which way up, and which face should point towards the light. For dissolving pairs, notches could preserve an alignment the operator had already tested.

The guide was explicit about the working conditions: the lanternist often depended more on touch than sight. Slides had to be cleaned, labelled and arranged in order beforehand. During a change, a hand or a cap over the front could conceal the bare disc of light, sparing the audience a dazzling interruption between pictures.

Twenty minutes of gas

Allen's problem in Adelaide went beyond the orientation of a slide. When he withdrew from further appearances with Kesterton, he said he had not been given enough control of the apparatus to make the entertainment succeed. He also denied the Register's charge that he had left an agreed part of his work undone.

Kesterton gave a different account. Their first interview, he wrote, had taken place on the Friday before Monday's performance. He had asked Allen to lecture on Creation and explain nine astronomical diagrams. Allen could take his own time over the lecture, but the spoken explanation accompanying the diagrams had to fit into twenty minutes. Kesterton's gas would last no longer.

According to Kesterton, Allen thought that insufficient and offered to use his own lamp, assisted by his son. Kesterton sent the diagrams over on Saturday morning. They came back at midday on Monday with word that Allen could not make his lamp work. The show would have to use Kesterton's gas after all.

The two men disagreed about what had been promised and who should command the equipment. Their letters reached readers in the same newspaper that had condemned the first evening. The Register sided with Kesterton. Allen's objection remained: he wanted a degree of control that the owner would not surrender.

A later lantern manual by Lewis Wright recommended a red light for a lecturer to signal the operator. A bell, he thought, was a nuisance to a lecture. The signal should come a few seconds before the change was needed; an operator who knew the lecture could dispense with it. Getting words and pictures to arrive together was part of preparing the performance.

Kesterton went on without Allen. At the next appearance described by the Register, he acknowledged that Monday's attempt had largely failed and offered refunds to anyone who had come specifically for the lecturer. Those willing to stay could have ten extra pictures. Earlier customers could apply for a ticket to another evening.

The paper's 22 January report then described a replacement speaker who got through the task, though without much voice or energy. This time the chromatropes won considerable applause. The attendance was miserable.