Blackmore Teaching Slides

During his tenure Ron Blackmore compiled a large set of teaching slides for College staff to use, both on campus and when out in the field in New Zealand, or overseas on extension studies.

These slides were prepared from negatives and so are second-generation images, with subsequent loss in sharpness and detail. However the double-glass sandwich slides (82mm square - much larger than 35mm, and heavy!) could be projected, which made them useful for teaching. Each teaching slide required considerable work in its preparation; darkroom work copying the negative image to a glass base, then laying another glass sheet over top to form a sandwich protecting the image surface, then binding the two together and, finally, labelling and marking the finished slide. A detailed card catalogue exists for a considerable part of the collection.

One of the subsets of these resources includes a set of slides titled "Slides for Overseas Use" dated 1948-49 which illustrate the development of New Zealand agriculture. These slides represent a short history of New Zealand agriculture and a snapshot of agricultural practice in the mid-20th century.