Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Magic lantern
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Educational use and other subjects=== [[File:Fotothek df tg 0003764 Optik ^ Lochkamera.jpg|thumb|Illustration of a lantern slide depicting [[Bacchus]] in Sturm's ''Collegium experimentale sive curiosum'' (1677)]] The earliest reports and illustrations of lantern projections suggest that they were all intended to scare the audience. Pierre Petit called the apparatus "lanterne de peur" (lantern of fear) in his 1664 letter to Huygens.<ref name=Petit>{{cite web|last=Petit|first=Pierre|title=Letter to Christiaan Huygens|date=28 November 1664 |url=http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huyg003oeuv04_01/huyg003oeuv04_01_0132.php}}</ref> Surviving lantern plates and descriptions from the next decades prove that the new medium was not just used for horror shows, but that many kinds of subjects were projected. Griendel didn't mention scary pictures when he described the magic lantern to [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] in December 1671: "An optical lantern which presents everything that one desires, figures, paintings, portraits, faces, hunts, even an entire comedy with all its lively colours."<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://www.academia.edu/346310|chapter=Sense and Nonsense in the use of Technology in Media History|first=Deac|last=Rossell|title=Die Medien und ihre Technik. Theorien, Modelle, Geschichte|date=2004|editor-first=Harro|editor-last=Segeberg|publisher=Schüren|location=Marburg, Germany|via=Academia.edu}}</ref> In 1675, Leibniz saw an important role for the magic lantern in his plan for a kind of world exhibition with projections of "attempts at flight, artistic meteors, optical effects, representations of the sky with the star and comets, and a model of the earth (...), fireworks, water fountains, and ships in rare forms; then mandrakes and other rare plants and exotic animals." In 1685–1686, Johannes Zahn was an early advocate for use of the device for educational purposes: detailed anatomical illustrations were difficult to draw on a chalkboard, but could easily be copied onto glass or mica.<ref name=rossell2002/> [[File:Études prises dans le bas peuple ou les Cris de Paris - Lorgue de Barberie.jpg|thumb|1737 etching/engraving of an organ grinder with a magic lantern on her back by [[Anne Claude de Caylus]] (after Edme Bouchardon)]] By the 1730s the use of magic lanterns started to become more widespread when travelling showmen, conjurers and storytellers added them to their repertoire. The travelling lanternists were often called Savoyards (they supposedly came from the [[Savoy]] region in France) and became a common sight in many European cities.<ref name=rossell2002/> In France in the 1770s [[François Dominique Séraphin]] used magic lanterns to perform his "Ombres Chinoises" (Chinese shadows), a form of [[shadow play]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Castle |first=Terry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cu5kvnn6kTsC |title=The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny |date=1995 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=1-4237-5848-X |location=Oxford, England |pages=146 |oclc=252550734}}</ref> Magic lanterns had also become a staple of science lecturing and museum events since Scottish lecturer [[Henry Moyes]]'s tour of America in 1785–86, when he recommended that all college laboratories procure one. French writer and educator [[Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis]] popularized the use of magic lanterns as an educational tool in the late 18th century when using projected images of plants to teach botany. Her educational methods were published in America in English translation during the early 1820s.<ref name="mitpressjournals">{{Cite journal |last=Ganter |first=Granville |date=2014 |title=Mistress of Her Art: Anne Laura Clarke, Traveling Lecturer of the 1820s |url=https://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article/87/4/709-746/16013 |journal=The New England Quarterly |language=en |volume=87 |issue=4 |pages=709–746 |doi=10.1162/TNEQ_a_00418 |issn=0028-4866 |access-date=28 August 2017 |s2cid=57561922|doi-access=free }}</ref> A type of lantern was constructed by [[Moses Holden]] between 1814 and 1815 for illustrating his astronomical lectures.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle= Holden, Moses |volume= 27 |last= Sutton |first= Charles William |author-link= Charles William Sutton |page= 121 |year= |short=1}}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)