OUAN05 - Understanding - Magic Lantern (c.1650)

The Magic Lantern

The magic lantern was a type of image projection device, that was developed in the 17th century with its main purpose being entertainment and sometimes, education purposes. Despite the debate it is widely accepted that the inventor of the magic lantern is Christiaan Huygens during the 1650s, however there are sources of evidence suggesting that Giovanni Fontana had already created such a device that projected an image of a demon. During the early development of the magic lantern there seemed to be a mysterious and in some ways a frightening stigma attached due to it because of the uses it had by different professions and the type of image it was used to convey. A couple of examples of this is Huygens device being referred to as the 'lantern of fright' after he used it to summon images of ghosts and a man named Thomas Walgensten who in the 1660s used the device to 'summon ghosts', this of course just being a simple projection. To add to this I think that the unavailability of information to the average person during the 16th and 17th century made it so people were easily convinced by peoples claims once they'd been introduced to a very alien thing such as the magic lantern at the time and demonstrations of the use of the magic lantern became more frightening and mysterious because of this.   In modern times, the device is primarily only used by collectors.

In essence the way the magic lantern functioned was using mirrors and glass to reflect and manipulate light in order to project images. In more detail, the process involves a concave mirror (concave meaning curved inwards) that directs a light source through a small rectangular glass slide or what was referred to as a 'lantern slide'. On the slide was the image that was to be projected, whether this be a photographic image later on or a painted image at the beginning. This image was projected through a lens and onto a simple white wall so that the clarity of the image was as clear as it could be on the white surface.

Apart from sunlight, at the time the only available light source was from a candle or oil lamp which didn't produce much light and was inefficient as a whole, so consequently the projected image was dim and hard to see. However, the invention of the argand lamp and the limelight in the late 18th and early 19th century produced a much more intense light and made using artificial light to project brighter images much easier. The magic lamp is considered the first or very distant ancestor of the motion picture projector, but itself could be used to produce moving images using mechanical slides. Usually, two glass slides would be placed one on top of the other, one part stationary and one part to move and then a hand operated mechanism would allow the slides to be switched and a moving image would appear to be projected. The mechanism was usually controlled by a lever. Chromotrope slides which produced displays of abstract geometric shapes and colour were operated by pulley wheel that rotated a glass disc.