Once Upon A Time - How The World
Looked, Lived, and Vanished
A Global View Of The World
With Rare Photographs & Text
By The Keystone View Company
This site will contain a collection of over 250 of the "P" Series lantern slides produced by the Keystone View Company. These "P" or Primary slides, were used as educational tools, in schools, museums, libraries, and Sunday schools.
Each thumbnail slide is accompanied by text provided by the company, of which I have 291 of the 300 original text cards that accompany each photograph. You will notice some pages have only text. Unfortunately there are no images to accompany them.
In my quest to garner the complete collection of P Series slides I have made some interesting observations:
1. There are color and black & white images (both of with the same view) with the identical P numbers and secondary numbers (P4).
2. The P number on the slide may be the same on two different views, but one image is in color and the other in black & white (P2)
3. There are some situations in which the P number is identical on both color and black & white images. However the secondary numbers are different (P31).
Keystone Glass Slide #P28
"The Matterhorn, Switzerland, Glimpses of Swiss Life in the Valleys"
4. There are some photos with different P numbers but the image is the same for each P number. An example is P66 and P77 (this image is all but destroyed). Both of these images show the exact same lion pride.
5. The text card has both the P number and the second number printed on it. Text card numbers and photo numbers match each other. If the two items don't match, then one of two situations have occured:
- There is a different text card for the photo I have, or
- There is a different photo to match the card I posses
6. There are different views of the same subject. These different views have the same P number and secondary number, therefore the images match the card number and the description on the card (P1).
Keystone Glass Slide #P26
"Bar Harbor from Scott's Hill, Mount Desert, ME" (If you look closely you can see the sailing ships in the harbor.)
Since the Keystone View Company has disappeared, I am unaware of any continuing copyrights which may be associated with this collection. Because these images are of a historical nature it may be impossible to determine ownership. I encourage their use, especially for educational and scholarly works. If used, I would appreciate a credit line to be included with each image.All images have a resolution of 72 dpi. I can provide resolutions of any of my images upto 300 dpi. If you need a greater resolution image, let me know and I might be able to provide it.