It was a traveling show which made use of projection and special effects. However this was back in the 18th century!
Invented by the French, this show made use of the "Magic Lantern" which was essentially a slide projector. In the show, they used the projector to project ghostly images onto walls, translucent sheets and even smoke! This is pretty cool for the 18th century! Audiences would be amazed at the materialization of ghosts before their eyes.
As the magic lantern was portable, it was easy for them to transport it and travel around cities and towns to amaze people with this great show.
Animated plates were added, as simple as they were, they were also very effective, for example there was a show called The Rat Swallower. In this show, the cartoon image of a sleeping man was projected onto a screen. The man's mouth opened and closed as he snored. Then a rat would crawl over him and jump into his open mouth.
These days it is very simple and very low tech to achieve something like that, yet back then, it was state of the art and very impressive!
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