In his autobiography, Came the Dawn, Cecil Hepworth describes the ‘thrill of joy’ he felt when he passed through the Great Hall at the Royal Polytechnic on Regent Street. The ‘magic of its atmosphere’, however, paled in comparison with the attractions of the theatre that ran alongside the Great Hall (16). Consisting of a complicated mixture of ordinary theatre fixtures, a stage and painted scenery, the theatre included a projection room that spanned the whole width of the theatre at dress circle level and contained upwards of fifteen limelight magic lanterns of various sizes set up to project a mixture of large painted and photographic slides, as well as trick slides of revolving geometrical patterns that created the illusion of movement on the screen. There was also a curious device known as a ‘Choreutoscope’ that Hepworth notes anticipated the modern cinematograph: