Bing’s range went beyond the toy railway

Bing’s name appears on railway toys and working steam models, but the Nuremberg maker also supplied children’s magic lanterns. The Science Museum records that it began advertising small tinplate lanterns for domestic use in 1886.

These projected pictures from glass slides. A surviving Bing example in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, dated around 1900–10, has a painted metal body, a lens and a round reflector, together with boxes of lantern pictures.

The Science Museum also holds a child’s Bing lantern from 1913–20. Its maker’s range extended from railway and workshop play to an evening picture show at home.

For collectors who know Bing through locomotives or steam engines, the optical toys open up another part of the same factory’s output.