Optical Toy : MY MAGIC LANTERN KIT

A kit book by Laurent STEFANO & Jérôme CLAEYS (France - 2017)

Build your own magic lantern and project picture strips.

The Magic Lantern (in Latin "Laterna Magica") is the mother of all visuel devices and media !

The Dutch physicist Christian HUYGENS is regarded as being the actual inventor of this instrument. In 1659, he constructed an apparatus for the projection of pictures painted on glass plates while using an oil lamp as a light source.

It is very difficult to imagine how our predecessors were impressed or even overwhelmed by the light images which had fascinated them at exhibitions on fair grounds and in bourgeois salons. Mobile lanterns were used to give the illusion of movement. By example, ghostly images were projected onto clouds of smoke while background sound effects created a scary feeling...

Up to the triumphant advance of the film projector in the last century, nothing has really fundamentally in the design principle of this "Magic Lantern" except for the fact that photography provides us with the pictures, and the light comes from an electric lamp.

The Lantern (detail)

Few strips :

This book is a french edition.
So, if you can read french, you’ll have a complete description
by clicking in Language Menu (Top).

LEARN MORE ON THE WEB...

History of Magic Lantern > 
on website LATERNA MAGICA
by the Cinémathèque Française (in French)