Editing Magic lantern (section)

==Invention==
===Christiaan Huygens===
[[File:1664-12-11 Lantern sketch - Huygens a Petit.jpg|thumb|A sketch of the lantern configuration (without a slide) from Huygens' letter to Pierre Petit (11 December 1664)]]
Dutch scientist [[Christiaan Huygens]] is considered as one of the possible inventors of the magic lantern. He knew [[Athanasius Kircher]]'s 1645 edition of ''Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae''<ref>{{cite book|url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k778725|title=Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens. Supplémént à la correspondance varia. Biographie de Chr. Huygens. Catalogue de la vente des livres de Chr. Huygens / publ. par la Société hollandaise des sciences|first=Christiaan (1629-1695) Auteur du texte|last=Huygens|publisher=M. Nijhoff|via=gallica.bnf.fr}}</ref> which described a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight. Christiaan's father Constantijn had been acquainted with Cornelis Drebbel who used some unidentified optical techniques to transform himself and to summon appearances in magical performances. Constantijn Huygens wrote about a camera obscura device that he got from Drebbel in 1622.<ref name="Snyder"/>

The oldest known document concerning the magic lantern is a page on which Christiaan Huygens made ten small sketches of a skeleton taking off its skull, above which he wrote "for representations by means of convex glasses with the lamp" (translated from French). As this page was found between documents dated in 1659, it is believed to have been made in the same year.<ref>{{cite web|first=Christiaan|last=Huygens|title=Pour des representations par le moyen de verres convexes à la lampe|url=http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huyg003oeuv22_01/huyg003oeuv22_01_0093.php|language=fr}}</ref> Huygens soon seemed to regret this invention, as he thought it was too frivolous. In a 1662 letter to his brother [[Lodewijck Huygens|Lodewijk]] he claimed he thought of it as some old "bagatelle" and seemed convinced that it would harm the family's reputation if people found out the lantern came from him. Christiaan had reluctantly sent a lantern to their father, but when he realized that Constantijn intended to show the lantern to the court of King [[Louis XIV of France]] at the Louvre, Christiaan asked Lodewijk to sabotage the lantern.<ref>{{cite web |first=Christiaan |last=Huygens |date=19 April 1662 |title=letter to Lodewijk Huygens |language=fr |url=http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huyg003oeuv04_01/huyg003oeuv04_01_0059.php#z1005}}</ref>

Christiaan initially referred to the magic lantern as "la lampe" and "la lanterne", but in the last years of his life he used the then common term "laterna magica" in some notes. In 1694, he drew the principle of a "laterna magica" with two lenses.<ref>{{cite web|first=Christiaan|last=Huygens|date=1694|title=Aanhangsel II bij het eerste Complement van de Dioptrica |language=nl |url=https://adcs.home.xs4all.nl/Huygens/13/compl-v.html}}</ref>

===Walgensten, the Dane===
[[File:1674 Dechales - Cursus seu mundus mathematicus - Laterna Magica.jpg|thumb|left|Walgensten's magic lantern as illustrated in [[Claude Dechales]] {{lang|la|Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus — Tomus secundus}} (1674)]]
{{ill|Thomas Rasmussen Walgensten|da|Thomas Walgensten}} ({{circa|1627}}–1681), a mathematician from [[Gotland]], studied at the [[Leiden University|university of Leiden]] in 1657–58. He possibly met Christiaan Huygens during this time (and/or on several other occasions) and may have learned about the magic lantern from him. Correspondence between them is known from 1667. At least from 1664 until 1670, Walgensten demonstrated the magic lantern in Paris (1664), Lyon (1665), Rome (1665–1666), and Copenhagen (1670).<ref name=rossell2002 /> He "sold such lanterns to different Italian princes in such an amount that they now are almost everyday items in Rome", according to Athanasius Kircher in 1671.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rendel |first=Mats |title=About the Construction of The Magic Lantern, or The Sorcerers Lamp. |url=http://www.phonurgia.se/rendel/mageng.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080118103300/http://www.phonurgia.se/rendel/mageng.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2008-01-18 |website=A Page About Athanasius Kircher}}</ref> In 1670, Walgensten projected an image of Death at the court of [[King Frederick III of Denmark]]. This scared some courtiers, but the king dismissed their cowardice and requested to repeat the figure three times. The king died a few days later. After Walgensten died, his widow sold his lanterns to the {{ill|Royal Danish Collection|da|Kongernes Samling}}, but they have not been preserved.<ref name=rossell2002/> Walgensten is credited with coining the term ''Laterna Magica'',<ref name="magiclantern">{{Cite web |last1=Auckland |first1=George |last2=Heard |first2=Mervyn |title=An Introduction to Lantern History (Part 4) |url=http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/history/history04.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180419053959/http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/history/history04.php |archive-date=19 April 2018 |access-date=28 August 2017 |website=The Magic Lantern Society}}</ref> assuming he communicated this name to [[Claude Dechales]] who, in 1674, published about seeing the machine of the "erudite Dane" in 1665 in Lyon.<ref>{{cite book|title=Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus|trans-title=The Course or The Mathematical World|volume=Secundus|language=la|last=Dechales|first=Claude François Milliet|authorlink=Claude Dechales|year=1674|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s1w2Zb7NZV0C&pg=PA665}}</ref>

===Possible German origins: Wiesel and Griendel===
[[File:1676 Johann Christoph Sturm - Griendel's lantern.jpg|thumb|Illustration of an early southern German lantern from [[Johann Sturm]], ''[[Collegium Experimentale]]'' (1677)]]
There are many gaps and uncertainties in the magic lantern's recorded history. A separate early magic lantern tradition seems to have been developed in southern Germany and includes lanterns with horizontal cylindrical bodies, while Walgensten's lantern and probably Huygens' both had vertical bodies. This tradition dates at least to 1671, with the arrival of instrument maker Johann Franz Griendel in the city of [[Nuremberg|Nürnberg]], which Johann Zahn identified as one of the centers of magic lantern production in 1686. Griendel was indicated as the inventor of the magic lantern by Johann Christoph Kohlhans in a 1677 publication.<ref name=Rossell2009 /> It has been suggested that this tradition is older and that instrument maker Johann Wiesel (1583–1662) from [[Augsburg]] may have been making magic lanterns earlier on and possibly inspired Griendel and even Huygens. Huygens is known to have studied samples of Wiesel's lens-making and instruments since 1653. Wiesel did make a ship's lantern around 1640 that has much in common with the magic lantern design that Griendel would later apply: a horizontal cylindrical body with a rosette chimney on top, a concave mirror behind a fixture for a candle or lamp inside and a biconvex lens at the front. There is no evidence that Wiesel actually ever made a magic lantern, but in 1674, his successor offered a variety of magic lanterns from the same workshop. This successor is thought to have only continued producing Wiesel's designs after his death in 1662, without adding anything new.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.academia.edu/20378426|title=The Origins of the Magic Lantern in Germany|last=Rossell|first=Deac|year=2004}}</ref>