Slide Mounting through History!

Following the recent concentration on Projectors, and Leitz in particular, I thought this might be a suitable place for a (short)study of the mounting systems that Leitz have supported over the years.In the Pre-War years Monochrome slides were popular as shown by the number of slide projectors with film strip facilties for which a (Leitz)  ELDIA printer was essential to get the pictures in the right order and to eliminate the mistakes!. This system had the finished film strip passing through the 'slide' projector by use of a winding mechanism-usually in panoramic format. However by about 1936 the World had learnt that there were colour films,Kodachrome in particular, which were very expensive to UK residents and could only be processed in the USA. In return for the effort and cost the 8 ASA product supplied superb results in Natural colour(color)which in many cases have been preserved until today. Moreover the pictures came back in card mounts as individual photographs suitable for projection as single slides without all that cranking of hand winding apparatus. Things just took off from there-largely for the wealthy-and it was not until the early 1950's that amateurs came to expect that their results would look good as colour slides '-just like the cinema'

I would speculate that the peak of interest in slides was from 1953 (The Coronation) until, say, 1980 by which time quality paper prints were available at low cost in the mass market. Today, neither are popular outside of keen amateur circles and Digital storage rules.

Continental film manufacturers brought colour slide film onto the market after the War and the Amateur started home processing. A large market for slide mounts sprang up. Originally most slides had been bound in a time consuming process of insertion between two sheets of thin glass bound with black water adhesive tape. Leitz went with a very high tech system based on the products of Perro-Color in Switzerland and an agreement was struck for these to bear Leitz/Leica name and also that of the makers. This plan was understandable as Leitz did not make film neither did they process film but they had a large market of slide film users with Leica cameras.

The mounts included two precision metal outer covers with a Nylon packing for the internal void. The mount accepted two glass covers and the whole was assembled by hand and inserted in a closing press which locked the whole mount. Glass could be plain or Anti Newton Ring type (them again-Blogs passim) and spare covers were available in case a mount had to be opened. These proved popular with professional users such as museums and Exhibitions. The main advantage being protection of delicate slide surfaces but Kodak persisted with card or 'plastic card' right up to the end. The disadvantage of the Perrocolor was the high cost owing to the complex construction and the country of origin. The picture with this Blog shows the prominence given to the Leitz name which was never disguised on the package. This was always lurking in the small print.