FROM THE ARCHIVES: Ypsilanti's nickelodeon caused controversy

In its earliest days, the Vaudette didn’t show movies, but still images from a turn-of-the-century slide projector called a stereopticon. Resembling a lantern-camera hybrid, the stereopticon had a slot in which a glass plate with an image could be inserted. A variety of illuminants were used including kerosene, acetylene gas, and an apparatus that burned a piece of the white alkaline material lime in an oxyhydrogen gas flame, giving rise to the technical and later metaphorical term “lime-light.” Visitors to the Vaudette, who had paid their nickel, could choose one of the forty or so plain wooden chairs arranged on the old grocery store’s wooden floor, facing the small makeshift screen in back. To the side of the screen sat an upright piano where a woman played popular

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