2023/2 - #Cycles

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Public lantern lectures in the Netherlands 1880-1940: A dataset based on historical newspaper advertisements
da Rocha Gonçalves, Dulce (2023) , S. 368-385
The media history research project Projecting Knowledge aimed to investigate the use of the magic lantern in science communication and knowledge transmission in the Netherlands between 1880 and 1940. For my research within this project, I conducted a survey of digitised historical newspapers based on the expression met lichtbeelden, the phrase that was most used to describe the use of projection in public lectures. My goal was to understand the reach and prevalence of this phenomenon. This paper discusses the dataset I created from this survey. Using newspaper advertisements as a primary source enabled me to extract information systematically such as date, location, venue, speaker, title of lecture, and organiser. The dataset contains a total of 4,638 entries between 1880 and 1926, and a comparison sample of 83 entries between 1927 and 1940.The dataset provides evidence of the versatility of public lantern lecture in the Netherlands. From concert halls to countryside pubs, academics, celebrity speakers, and popular lecturers discussed not only scientific developments or pioneering expeditions but also mundane topics such as ‘How can one keep chickens and make a profit?’ Moreover, this paper underlines how structured data can be an important resource to historical research.