Dissolving views lantern slide by T.H.Allister of a monkey standing on hind legs.

A hand-tinted illustration lantern slide used as a pair to create a dissolve with 91290. This slide shows a monkey standing on two legs, scratching his/her head, with very human facial features. These slides draw a racist parallel between black people and primates and show the everyday nature of racist discourse in America in the 19th century. Manufactured by T.H. McAllister, Optician, N.Y., who also made magic lanterns. McAllister was a leading American family of optical lantern manufacturers. Dissolving view. This image could disappear and be quickly replaced by another. This technique enabled one scene to be gradually faded out by the lanternist, while at the same time another was gradually faded in, giving the effect of a scene slowly changing before the eyes of the audience. During the latter half of the nineteenth century this technique was widely used, using a pair of lanterns side-by-side. Later, particularly after the widespread adoption of limelight illuminants, biunial lanterns (one unit on top of another) were used.