# Do people still use slide projectors? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 26, 2011, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126 "2011-11-26T05:26:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/21 "2011-11-29T14:53:07Z")
My sister took a lots of slides from the late 70s up to maybe 2000 or so. When she was admitted to a hospice a couple of months ago my partner and I lugged up a bag full of her slides, together with an old projector and an even older screen that we had lying about so she could see the pictures properly - she hadn’t seen them actually projected for years; in fact she hadn’t seen some of them projected at all, only through a little light box. We spent the whole evening looking at them. Very glad we made the effort as she died the following morning. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/22 "2011-11-29T19:52:13Z")
My mother uses the low-tech approach of passing a stack of snapshots around the room instead. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/23 "2011-11-29T22:06:06Z")
Children using slide shows in the opening scenes of (Proust) In Search of Lost Time and the film (Bergman) Fanny and Alexander are crucial to the entire artworks. The works were either written or set ca. 1905. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2011, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/24 "2011-11-30T14:25:33Z")
A slide projector was part of a dedicated photographer’s equipment - see comments above about the quality of slides vs. photos and digital; Kodachrome was so famous for the quality of its colour that Paul SImon sings about it. In the 60’s the “slide show of my vacation” as a cliche for a boring night was common - I remember New Yorker cartoons on the theme. Yes, new records were a big deal. The local record store (what dat?) would get a shipment in, and they would sell out pretty fast. Albums sold for about $10 each give or take as opposed to today, when an album sells for… ; considering that minimum wage was 1/5 to 1/10 what it is now, that would be like paying $50-plus for an album. The guy who could afford it (or chose that particular album to blow his savings) would share it with friends, since you could not own it all unless your dad was rich. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/25 "2011-11-30T18:23:22Z")
I don’t know if its still the case, but I worked for SGI (who owned Cray supercomputers at the time) about 10 years ago. At that time a lot of the old Cray hands, who did a lot of defence and intelligence work, would use slides rather than Powerpoint as the kind of sensitive customer sites they often had to give presentations at would not allow cell phones or laptops, due to the potential security risk. ---
**Author:** ![sco3tt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@sco3tt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sco3tt)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2011, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126/26 "2011-11-30T19:40:20Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > My dad once told me that, when he was a kid, and someone first bought the new album by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, or whoever, all the guys would go over to that guy’s house and they’d all listen to the record together. It blew my mind to imagine something like that, as the situation with music today is so incredibly different - now everyone gets every song they want in a few seconds on the computer. But back then, a communal listening session was built upon the physical acquisition of the media. Even stranger, I remember 30 or so years ago when a significant artist released a new album, some of those places we called “record stores” would have midnight listening events. They’d open the doors after hours (or just delay their closing time) so you could hear/buy the latest release as soon as they were allowed to sell it. I think I picked up Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” this way. I’ve recently seen flyers for similar gatherings in non-record-store locations (i.e. a local band hosting a listening party at a coffee shop for the new CD-R they just burned or MP3s they posted on their website) but those just seem like retro throwback events with none of the same sense of immediacy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-still-use-slide-projectors/604126.md?page=1)