Magic Lantern Slides have been used since the 1600s to entertain and educate. Many of the slides in this collection depict scenes from the Hawkesbury Agricultural College from the 1890s until about the 1930s. Some slides are of classes, social activities, crops and farming techniques. Other slides are from places visited or were produced in order to train the students how to maintain and use various tools.

Charles T Musson, the English Master, wrote in the 1895 Annual Report that 'a number of lantern slides, illustrating various farm subjects, have been made, and lantern lectures have been given (some of the slides lent by Technical College) on Poultry and Bees (Mr. Rien), History of a Sovereign (Science Master), Elementary Botany, Vegetable Pathology, Prehistoric Man, Abbeys and Monasteries of Great Britain, by myself'.