Professor Pepper | A broadside reviewing Pepper's "Proteus" and other illusions

Professor Pepper

Opinions of the London and Provincial Press [on] Professor Pepper and Mr T. W. Tobin's ... Proteus and M. Gompertz's Spectrescope. Glasgow: City Steam Printing Works, [1867]

Letterpress playbill (515 x 380 mm). Ruled in a decorative border; chips to margins, affecting border at head and right margin, several closed tears, a few pinholes, old folds. Mounted on linen.

A handsome broadside gathering reviews of spectral illusions by various newspapers

John Henry Pepper, whose stage name was Professor Pepper, was "a scientist-cum-lecturer-cum-inventor who in 1884 became the director of the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London. The major theatrical illusion of the nineteenth century was his 'Pepper's Ghost,' a device that allowed for a transparent image to appear on stage, walk through walls, and interact with live thespians" (EE). The illusion billed here, "Proteus," was adapted from Pepper's Ghost by the architect Thomas Tobin, which made figures "appear, vanish, or transform within an apparently empty cabinet," and the two debuted it as a joint invention. Gompertz's Spectrescope, also reviewed here, was a similar invention—projecting spectral phantasms that accompanied a performance of Goethe's Faust, and other plays.

REFERENCE:

EE, p. 152