The Origins and Development of the Magic Lantern
Overview
More than twenty-five hundred years ago, intellectuals from many cultures began to experiment with image projection in their attempts to understand the relationship between the mechanics of the human eye and the physical principles of light. Consequently, they discovered the value of image projection for religious, educational, and entertainment purposes. In the fifth century B.C., Chinese philosopher Mo Ti described a "collecting place" or "locked treasure room" where an inverted image appeared on a screen when light passed through a pinhole. During the fourth century B.C., Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) similarly described what would eventually be called the camera obscura; Chinese inventor Ting Huan is said to have perfected a device for projecting moving images in c. 207 B.C. Others attribute the earliest description of sequential animation to Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman poet and philosopher, in c. 65 B.C. Around the tenth century A.D., the Arab philosopher Ibn al Haytham (965-1038) described the mechanics of the pinhole camera. It is now thought that al Haytham was describing optic principles already well known throughout the world. By the Renaissance, ground glass lenses had made possible the improvement and widespread use of spectacles and telescopes, as well as improved focus in pinhole boxes or "cameras obscuras," from which the magic lantern derives.
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