We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
BRIEF HISTORICAL SUMMARY
677
of the wall upon which the image was exhibited the larger was the image. . . In the third place, the little image in the lantern was inverted in order to exhibit its figure erect upon the opposite wall. If the object was removed there appeared only a circle of light" (vol. ii, p. 655; 2d ed., vol. iii, p. 680).
Figure 403 is a facsimile of the lantern of Walgensten which he exhibited at Lyons in 1665. A glance at it will show any one that it is in all essential particulars like the modern magic lantern. Indeed such lanterns are much in vogue for Christmas presents at the present time, differing only in having a kerosene lamp with a chimney instead of the naked flame as shown in the original.
Kircher himself in the second edition of his work, (Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1671, p. 768-769), claims that the lantern of the Dane is merely a
. 1 81
FIG. 405. MOLYNEUX'S MAGIC LANTERN WITH A CONDENSING LENS BEFORE
THE OBJECT.
(From Molyneux's Dioptrica Nova, 1692}
This is the first picture of a magic lantern with a condensing lens that we have found.
slight modification of the one described by him, but he admits that Walgensten's instrument is in better form and has many pictures on a single slide painted in transparent colors that can be shown one after the other.
Kircher figures his magic lantern, which is here reproduced in facsimile (fig. 404) . As pointed out by Neuhauss, it is difficult to see how a picture could be projected by the arrangement shown by Kircher. The text describes the lantern as here shown, so both text and figure agree. In Kircher's lantern as figured and described by himself, the object is put at the wrong end of the projection objective; or if the tube and glass shown represent a condenser, which he does not claim, then in that case there is no projection objective. In either case no image could be projected.