Film Slide Cabinet from H. Berthold AG, after 1960
Object of the month March 2021
Until the introduction of digital presentation techniques at the beginning of the 1990s, the main imaging tool used during lectures was a projector filled with film slides. The slide cabinet from the advertising department of the H. Berthold AG type foundry in Berlin bears this out.
This furniture piece has four stacked compartments, each of which provides space for 200 metal frames which can hold up to 100 35mm slides. The frames can be moved in front of an illuminated back panel in the center of the cabinet via rails. The light is necessary in order to view the slides. It also facilitates the selection of individual designs from the more than 20,000 images of type specimens, layout templates and phototypesetting devices. The slides made by the Berlin-based photographer Uwe Rau not only document the product lines of H. Berthold AG, but also numerous formative designs in typography and layout since the 1960s.
Günter Gerhard Lange, the artistic director of H. Berthold AG and internationally recognized typographer, type designer and teacher, used these slides for his lectures. They were an important tool for attracting new business contacts in the printing and phototypesetting sectors and also useful for anyone working professionally in type design.
In the 1920s H. Berthold AG was, together with a few companies in the USA, one of the world's largest type foundries. In 1993 the company had to file for bankruptcy. The corporate archives of H. Berthold AG and the estates of G. G. Lange and his successor Bernd Möllenstädt are now located in the Deutsches Technikmuseum.