A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DMagic Lanterns : late 17th C. - early 20th C.Please allow time for all the images on this page to load and note that some images are displayed at a reduced size to allow viewing of the whole image without scrolling. Various people are credited with the invention of the Magic Lantern. Possible claimants are Claude Millet 1674 - France, Rasmusser Walgertsen - 1660 Denmark, Christiaan Huygens - 1659 - Holland, Athansius Kircher - 1646 - Germany, Giovanni Battista della Porta - 1589 - Italy and Pierre Fournier - 1515 - France. One of them is often pointed out as the inventor. This is usually done out of nationalistic interests instead of historical fact. The oldest drawing of a magic lantern can be found in a sketchbook of Johannes de Fontana. Dating from 1420 it depicts a monk holding such a lantern. In the side of the lantern there is a small translucent window carrying an image of a 'devil' holding a lance. The image, said to probably have been detailed on a thin sheet of bone, was supposedly projected onto a wall by the lantern flame. Without a lens the process would have produced a very blurry image. Developed from http://users.bart.nl/~loeker/Euitvi.htm
As early as 1420 Giovanni da Fontana, a young Venetian academic in Padua proposed the mischievous notion of painting demonic shapes on the horn window of an ordinary lantern in order to frighten people with the grotesque shadows thereby cast upon a wall. Without a condenser to concentrate the lamplight or a lens to focus the image, however, Giovanni's shadows must have been fairly vague. Almost two and a half centuries more passed before the lantern acquired the magic of precise representation.
 The Magic Lantern, Athanasius Kircher, 1671
In 1645 polymath Jesuit scholar Athansius Kircher (1601 - 1680) described and illustrated a device for reflecting the light of the sun from a mirror, through a lens and onto a screen. In 1671 in a new edition of his book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (The Great Art of Light and Shadow), Kircher himself described and illustrated a magic lantern - unfortunately rather inaccurately, the relationship of the image to be projected and the lens shown were reversed in relation to the light source. * Since these were the first printed illustrations of the magic lantern, Kircher has been frequently credited with its invention, a more likely claimant appears to be the Dutch Physicist Christiaan Huygens whose correspondence shows him to have been using a practical magic lantern as early as 1659. Huygens dealt with a London optician named Richard Reeves, who was selling lanterns by 1663. Diarist Samuel Pepys noted in his entry for August 19, 1666, two weeks before the Great Fire of London, writing in his diary. "Comes by agreement Mr. Reeves, bringing a 'lanthorn', with pictures in glasse to make strange things to appear on a wall, very pretty". Coe, B., 'A History of Movie Photography'
By 1664, a Danish scientist Thomas Rasmussen Walgenstein, the first writer to use the name Lanterna Magica, was demonstrating the device in various European cities. Stein, R., 'The Great Inventions'
Magic Lantern Gallery - 1
 Magic Lantern, late 17th cent. early 18th cent. (see image below)
 Magic Lantern, late 17th cent. early 18th cent.
The same lantern as above? The source site notes the following under the image Source: http://aixopenet6.ope.net/~ucstampa/agenzia/num22/citt2.htm
 Magic Lantern, c.1650 tba
 Magic Lantern, c.1850
Designed for domestic use this lantern was.."Illuminated by an oil lamp, (and)..projected A larger version of this image is available The Photographic Historical Society of Canada
 Magic Lantern, c.1850 A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Magic Lantern, c.1850 A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Magic Lantern, c.1850 A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Lamposcope, c.1850 A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Lamposcope, c.1850 A larger version of this image is available Auction Catalogue 1998
 Magic Lantern, c.1850 Noted on source site to be by 'Ernst Planck & Co' of Germany. If so a very early model A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Three Magic Lanterns, c.1860 Auction Catalogue 1998
 Magic Lantern, c.1860 Auction Catalogue 1998
 Magic Lantern made by Augustin Lapierre, c.1860
The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture Bill Douglas' site is well worth a visit but please, do come back !
 Magic Lantern, c.1850 Stein, R., 'Great Inventions'
Phantasmagoria Type Lantern A larger version of this image is available
The above image and this information was kindly supplied by Lionel Hughes from his on-line sale catalogue. The lantern was built by Frederick Cox who operated at 100 Newgate from 1844-1871. The black painted lantern features the common high crooked chimney & brass pull out focusing lens and condenser lens. The lantern stands 28 inches (71cm.) high including chimney and came in a matching pine box. Also shown is an interesting twin wick oil lamp labelled "PATENT DUPLEX by JAMES HINKS & SON". Sadly for you collectors out there, this lantern found a new home in February 1998 however, Lionel's site features a host of items from our photographic history not so committed, many with matching photographs.
You may wish to also view several pages of glass lantern slides from around this era
The Lantern Slide from the pages of the Dead Media Project
Lantern slides came in several physical formats. Peck and Snyder's proprietary slides were 4 1/2 by 7 inches. The "usual English pattern" was 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 and the "French pattern" was 3 1/4 by 4 inches. (Brian Coe describes the standard European size as 3 1/4 by 3 1/4 inches.) But specialised slides could be over a foot long, containing gears, cranks, cogs, or even belts and pulleys. Slides were attached in front of the condensing lenses, outside the body of the lantern itself. They slid into place horizontally through metal runners at top and bottom. The following describes some of the mechanical variants of the lantern slide. Lever Action Slides. A lever protruded from one corner of the slide, attached to a second, overlapping pane of painted glass. When the lever was depressed or lifted the second glass rotated through a brief arc, resulting in a single animated movement on the lantern's screen. The Peck and Snyder catalogue enthuses: "The moving effects produced on the screen are very life-like. (...) The horse is put in motion by the lever, and appears to be cantering. (...) The children go up and down as natural as can be, and the audience can hardly believe that they are not alive. The No. 2 Electro Radiant Magic Lantern reproduces these pictures 8 to 12 feet in diameter. We consider the Lever one of the very best mechanical effects." Peck and Snyder sold lever-action slides for between $1.75 and $2.25. Brian Coe's History of Movie Photography describes double and even triple lever-action slides, but the truly elaborate ones were apparently rare. Peck and Snyder does not offer any doubles or triples. Slip slides. Slip slides had two panes of glass, with a thumb-and-finger notch cut into one corner of the wooden frame. The moving pane of glass was gripped and pulled by hand, a very simple operation. Slip slides often used black patches to obscure and reveal details of the background slide. Coe describes sub-varieties of "slipping slides" that were pulled with tabs. Peck and Snyder: "Part of the picture is painted on one glass and the other on part on another glass. The two are arranged in a frame so that one glass slips over the other, and very comical effects are produced. It is a great mystery to the uninitiated, and they cannot understand how the transformations are made." Peck and Snyder retailed these for a thrifty seventy-five cents each. Mechanical Slides: Rackwork and Pulley Slides. Early rotary slides sometimes used a belt-and-pulley drive, with two brass disks turned in contrary directions by belt drives and a little hand-crank. This technique was rivalled and eventually replaced by the neater and more accurate rack-and-pinion system. A single round disk of glass with a toothed brass rim could be cranked and rotated indefinitely. This caused repeated rotary animation on the screen. Rackwork slides cost $4.25 to $5.00 in Peck and Snyder's catalogue. The catalogue offers no pulley slides circa 1886. Chromatropes. Says Peck and Snyder: "These are handsomely painted geometrical or other figures on two glasses, which, by an ingenious arrangement of crank pinion and gear wheels, are made to revolve in opposite directions, producing an endless variety of changes, almost equal to a grand display of fire-works." Chromatrope cranks could produce single rackwork rotation against a fixed background, or double counter-rotation of both disks of glass. Peck and Snyder's chromatropes could project various brightly colored psychedelic moire' patterns up to twelve feet across. Professional chromatrope displays in large urban theatres must have been quite mind- boggling. The Eidotrope was a chromotrope variant using counter-rotating disks of perforated metal, showing a swirling pattern of brilliant white dots on the screen. "Tinters" or colored translucent sheets could be added to tint the display. Coe describes Eidotropes, but Peck and Snyder does not offer any Eidotropes for sale circa 1886. C. W. Ceram's ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CINEMA states that Eidotropes were powered by pulleys and "superseded" by Chromatropes. The Cycloidotrope (see Coe p.19) was a truly remarkable variant, a kind of lantern spirograph. A black disk of smoked glass rotated within the slide frame, and a stylus on a pivoted arm traced a pattern in the soot against the moving glass. This appeared on the screen as a brilliant white line tracing a regular geometric design, an increasingly complex animated display. The stylus could be re-set as the cycloidotrope rotated, producing interlocking rosettes and similar mechanical geometries. Peck and Snyder do not sell or mention this impressive but labor-intensive graphic device. Images very similar to those generated by the Eidotrope and Cycloidotrope are now quite popular in computer screen-savers. Dioramic Slides. These very elongated slides were twice as wide as normal slides, 4 1/2 by 12 or 14 inches. Peck and Snyder: "These slides are exceedingly beautiful. The painting is artistic and elaborate, and the wonder is they can be sold so cheaply. A scene is painted on fixed glass, and over this is made to pass a long procession of figures -- soldiers, vessels, trains of cars, caravans, as the case may be -- with the most pleasing and wonderful effects." The colored background image was small and square, but the pane with little figures was over a foot long. The figures slid along in front of the painted background. Peck and Snyder sold dioramic slides for $3 each. Panorama slides. These landscape-style slides were over a foot long and could be gently drawn past the condensing lenses, "panning" across the picture. Like diorama slides, they often had a procession of moving figures as well. They cost $3.35 to $4.50 from Peck and Snyder. Coe states that a London optician named J. Darker succeeded in attaching a kaleidoscope to the lens of a magic lantern in the 1860s. Says Coe: "His projection Kaleidoscope produced a remarkable effect when used to fill a large screen with a colourful, constantly changing pattern." (The Kaleidoscope itself, an optical toy which is very much alive, was invented by Sir David Brewster and patented in 1817.) Ceram, C. W., Archaeology of the Cinema, Coe, Brian, The History of Movie Photography, and Peck and Snyder's Catalogue (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press, ISBN 0-87861-094-4
and then there was... In the 1780's a Swiss scientist, Ami Argand, devised and patented an improved lamp that provided a light source strong enough to make the Magic Lantern capable of theatrical exhibition. Limelight... In 1801 Professor Robert Hare invented the oxy-hydrogen blowlamp. A piece of calcium oxide was added by Lieutenant Thomas Drummond in his signal lamp of 1826 and by the middle of the century Drummond's limelight had become the principal source of illumination for all but the domestic lantern. This was in turn (after 1878) slowly replaced by the electric arc lamp. On a domestic level the paraffin oil lamp was the main source of light by the middle of the nineteenth century having replaced the Argand tallow oil lamp of 1780. Domestic gas then electricity came into use around the turn of the century. The simplest light source of all, the candle, was also popular in many toy lanterns sold around the turn of the century. Robinson, D., From Peep Show to Palace and Coe, B., A History of Movie Photography. also... Limelight by John H. Lienhard Sir Humphrey Davy gave a famous series of lectures on natural philosophy at the Royal Institution of London starting just after 1800. Davy was enormously influential, and he returned again and again to the theme of light. Light and seeing were scientific fixations in the first half of the 19th century. That age produced dioramas, magic lanterns, photography, the first electric lighting (long before Edison), and public gas lighting. Michael Faraday followed Davy in those lectures, and, in the early 1820s, a young member of the Royal Engineers, Lt. Thomas Drummond, watched him do a demonstration. When Faraday turned an oxygen-hydrogen flame on a lump of quicklime, the heated lump emitted a brilliant light. Drummond saw a new use for that flukey behavior. Setting distant markers for surveyors could radically improve the accuracy of geographic surveys. In 1825, Drummond set a limelight marker on a mountaintop near Belfast. It was so bright it could be seen in Donegal county, sixty-six miles away. By now Drummond's limelight has become our metaphor for the glow of public approbation, for being seen. That metaphor took shape in 1837, when limelight systems became sufficiently streamlined that they could be moved into the theater. Just before Davy's first lectures, the English had begun obtaining domestic gas from coal and leaving behind clean-burning coke. By 1837, all major theaters were being lit by coal gas. After thousands of years with little change, gas lighting was now flooding stages with light, far cheaper than the old candelabras and lanterns. And that created a craving for still more light. Limelight finished the transformation of the theater. It cast the light of high noon on stages. Lenses and filters gave limelight the warmth it lacked. It lasted until the new electric lighting systems arrived in the late 1800s. But limelight found other uses as well. The military used it to illuminate enemies at night. During the siege of Charleston, the Union Navy focused limelight on Fort Sumter while they pounded it into rubble. Ships found one another by night. During the 1870s and '80s, workmen under the East River dug the caissons for the Brooklyn Bridge by limelight. By 1952, when Charlie Chaplin made the movie Limelight, the word itself lingered only as a metaphor. "Find your light," an old actor tells the narrator in the play, Fantastiks. That means seek the center of the light that'll show you to the world. It means, "Find that same limelight beam which first cut through the night, all the way from Belfast to Donegal." References Penzel, F., Theatre Lighting Before Electricity. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978. Rees, T., Theatre Lighting in the Age of Gas. London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1978. Beal, D., The Limelight - American Heritage of Invention and Technology, Fall, 1997, pp. 38-41. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1268.htm
Magic Lantern Gallery - 2
 The Magic Lantern - Simplified Operating Principle Pfragner, J., 'The Motion Picture : from Magic Lantern to Sound Film'
 Magic Lantern c.1895
"The Magic Lantern was invented in the 17th century. It projected images from #169;Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation.
 Early Magic Lantern powered by an arc light source Stein, R., 'Great Inventions'
 Walter Tyler's Helioscopic (Magic) Lantern c.1895 'Collins Eyewitness Science' - 'Light'
 Manufacturer's Plate from Tyler's Helioscopic Lantern 'Collins Eyewitness Science' - 'Light'
 Combination Toy Film Projector and Magic Lantern, c.1900
Museo n the popular-science museum in The Hague, Netherlands
 'Nursery' Magic Lantern, c.1925
"Made in Germany by Ernst Planck & Co., the 'Nursery' Lantern used
 'Gloria' Magic Lantern, c.1900
"Made in Germany by Ernst Planck & Co., the 'Gloria' is representative A larger version of this image is available Photographic Services: Smithsonian National Museum of American History
 Magic Lantern, c.1900 Noted on source site to be by 'Ernst Planck & Co' of Germany A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
 Magic Lantern, c.1900 Of similar design to the above lantern, note the addition of the filmstrip capability A larger version of this image is available http://www.tomb.ne.mediaone.net/lanterns
'Biunial' or double lens Magic Lantern labelled on original site as
This date being so specific puzzles the author as the styling suggests a somewhat Comments are invited on this or any other information provided on this page. A larger version of this image is available http://aixopenet6.ope.net/~ucstampa/agenzia/num22/citt2.htm
 'Biunial' or double lens Magic Lantern, late 19th century
 'Triunial' or triple lens Magic Lantern, late 19th century
 'Triunial' or triple lens Magic Lantern, late 19th century http://intercity.it/associazioni/lanterna/main_uk.html
 Well known 'Lanternist', C. Goodwin Norton, late 19th century Stein, R., 'Great Inventions'
Also see the superb collection of pre-cinema artifacts in the George Eastman House 'Technology Archive'.
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