The earliest date known for a magic lantern is 1659, when Dutch physicist Christian Huygens wrote to his family about a lantern that he had created. A Danish showman- mathematician, Rasmussen Walgenstein, demonstrated a magic lantern in 1662, and the optician Reeves of London was selling lanterns the following year. Diarist Samuel Pepys bought one in August 1666, just two weeks before the Great Fire of London. In 1664 the French scientist Pierre Petit was attempting to make a lantern and wrote to Huygens for advice, enclosing a sketch. The first printed illustrations (right) appeared in 1671, in Father Athanasius Kircher"s second edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (The Great Art of Light and Shadow), although these illustrations (modern interpretation above) do not show a conventional optical lantern layout. A more conventional design appeared in a book by Dechales in 1674, and from then on many books and encyclopaedias included descriptions and illustrations of magic lanterns of many kinds. 
Ref: David Robinson
Return to
THE OPTICAL ROOM |