Proceedings of the American Association of Museums (Volume 7-8) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913. Excerpt: ... lectures and slides all through the state of New York, although he did not send lanterns, simply sending the slides with the written lectures. "We went a step further. We procured lanterns that in the first instance were run with kerosene, because they went into little remote schools where the teacher probably had never seen a lantern. Everyone is used to handling kerosene lamps, and we knew that the teacher would know how to trim a lantern which burned kerosene oil. Later we found that electricity had so developed that there were electric plants in some small towns of only three or four or five hundred people, so we added both incandescent and arc lanterns. Today we are using for the remote schools acetylene lights, which come with the compressed gas in a little tank that is so simple that a child could handle it. Kerosene has been done away with. At present we are circulating continually fifteen lanterns and thirty cases, keeping two or three people busy in taking care of them. "In addition to writing new lectures on all kinds of subjects, we so adjust this matter that some person who is a little ahead of the others in a given township will arrange that one lantern will go into five or eight or sometimes ten schools, and yet be back to us in fifteen days. We are also letting the churches have these lanterns. I have had them go to a remote part of Pennsylvania and be back in eleven days, after being used seven times, so they are going back and forth all the time. "The real point that I want to make about this work is that hitherto we have been absolutely unconnected with the school system in Philadelphia. Last January, however, I received a communication from the superintendent of schools, sending me a report of the committee appointed by the district su...