The magic lantern as a means of advertising. Historical tour by news, anectotes and patents.

Abstract

The magic lantern, the device in which we can find the origins of the current audio-visual culture, was also the cradle of media advertising. During the last decades of the 19th Century, in an attempt to face the growing advertising saturation that was already visible in the dairy press and on the walls of big cities, the advertisers, projectionists and a large group of inventors, began to turn to the magic lantern as a means for exhibiting all kind of advertisements. In doing so, they wanted to add a spectacular element to advertising which would ultimately succeed in attracting the attention of consumers, that were immersed in the transit from an agricultural and industrial society to an economy based on consumption. This article chronologi-cally reviews the different sources in which it is possible to find information about the subject. Through newspapers articles, patents’ records and bibliographic references, a timeline is laid down to observe the evolution of the use of magic lanterns for advertising purposes and their promoters’ stated intention to link that messages to the leisure and entertainment realms, characteristics that are still evident in current 21th Century advertising.

Keywords

• linterna mágica
• publicidad audiovisual
• diapositivas publicitarias
• anuncios
• patentes de invención publici-taria
• historia de la publicidad.