Help us get to over 8,755 articles in 2024.
If you know of a magician not listed in MagicPedia, start a New Biography for them. Contact us at magicpediahelp@gmail.com
Magic lantern
Magic lantern or Lanterna Magica was the ancestor of the modern slide projector.
In the 17th-18th centuries, physicists develop the use of optics and experiment with the system, improving it over the course of time. The impetus to develop the system was the use it found in phantasmagoria performances, especially those of Étienne-Gaspard Robert.
In the 19th century, a thriving trade of itinerant projectionists travels around the United Kingdom with their magic lanterns and a large number of slides to put on shows in towns and villages. Some of the slides came with special effects, by means of extra sections that could slide or rotate across the main plate. One of the most famous of these, very popular with children, was The Rat Swallower, where a series of rats would be seen leaping into a sleeping man's mouth.
Many magicians at the time, such as Albert Edward Smith, included them as part of their act.
References
This page incorporated content from Magic lantern,
a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License |