Mutoscope

The individual image frames are conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards.

Mutoscopes were a popular feature of amusement arcades and pleasure piers in the UK until the introduction of decimal coinage in 1971.

Both in the early days and during the revival, that mixture usually included "girlie" reels which ran the gamut from risqué to outright soft-core pornography.

The San Francisco Call printed a short piece about the Mutoscope in 1898, which claimed that the device was extremely popular: "Twenty machines, all different and amusing views...are crowded day and night with sightseers.

"[6] In 1899, The Times also printed a letter inveighing against "vicious demoralising picture shows in the penny-in-the-slot machines.

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the corruption of the young that comes from exhibiting under a strong light, nude female figures represented as living and moving, going into and out of baths, sitting as artists' models etc.