The miracle of the magic lantern (1)

The miracle of the magic lantern (part 1)

'A magic lantern? that's a kind of lamp that Aladdin rubbed when he made a wish, isn't it?'. Young people often look astonished when they hear the words 'magic lantern'. Older people usually know immediately the real meaning of the words. Often the words may evoke images of a far, romantic past. Only a few of them will remember how their father, on the occasion of a birthday party or perhaps at Christmas, with a ceremonious look on his face took down the apparatus from the attic to give his excited children an unforgettable evening. Without a doubt it was a real miracle that was shown to them: On a simple white sheet father was conjuring up the most curious figures and persons. Dirty Peter for instance, the boy who did not like to wash or Philip the Swinger, who kept on his chair until he fell over backwards, thereby taking the tablecloth with all on it with him. Yes, enjoying yourself was excellent, but besides that it was necessary to learn something from it too. This was not always a very delicate matter. For the bad habit of the little nail-biter a very effective but also very ruthless solution was found: her little fingers were simply chopped off!
	Now as with many other inventions, for instance the art of printing, it is not known exactly who invented the magic lantern. The 'Laterna Magica' had already been described in an old writing by a German Jesuit priest and scientist, Athanasius Kircher. The 1646 edition of his 'Ars magna lucis et umbrae (The great art of light and shadow) included the description of a primitive projection system whereby sunlight reflected off a mirror is projected through a lens on a screen. The second edition, published in 1671, included the first drawings of a magic lantern. There is a persistent anecdote about this erudite priest. It has to be considered highly unlikely but it's a beautiful story after all: The father had thought of a practical application for his invention. While visiting his unfaithful believers in the evening, he hid a simple magic lantern under his cowl. When talking did not help anymore, he switched to other, tougher measures. On the glass of his lantern he had painted a realistic image of the death, which he projected from the outside on the parchment windows of the simple farmhouses. That was really successful and had a marked effect. The next Sunday morning his church was packed to the very roof again.
	Athanasius Kircher was certainly not the first to design a magic lantern. By the time he published his first illustrations, the magic lantern had already been described by others, like the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, and was probably in fairly wide use. In Huygens' books we find the first description of a complete, working magic lantern and in 1659 already he constructed a projecting lantern with a three-element lens. For that reason Christiaan Huygens is today considered the most likely inventor of the magic lantern. However Christiaan was not very proud of his invention. He was ashamed because it appeared that various swindlers were using his instrument to frighten people. His father, who served at the French court of Louis XIV, once ordered a lantern upon the king’s request. Christiaan did not comply with this request because he was afraid that he would ridicule the Huygens family. (Also read: Christiaan Huygens, the true inventor).
More Dutch scientists have paid an important role in the development of the magic lantern. The Professor Willem Jacob van ‘s Gravesande, living in the Dutch town of Leiden, and the instrument-maker Jan van Musschenbroek improved the equipment quite a bit. (Also read: The oldest magic lantern in the world.) At that time four-wick oil lamps came into use, whilst before mostly a candle had been used as source of light. Van 's Gravesande's lantern and slides survive in the Boerhaave Museum, Leiden.
		Until the second half of the eighteenth century magic lanterns were mostly used by scientists, but soon various people realised that it was good business and took advantage of it. The Dutch word 'Luikerwalen' (foreigners will probably need a long time to pronounce this word correctly!) stands for people originating from Luik in Wallonia. They were travelling all over the country to give performances at fairs, in pubs etc. The government had forbidden them to carry rat-poison throughout the country while catching rats had been the main activity of these people to make a living before, so they had to find a new source of income. The projector and the accompanying slides they carried on their backs, were built by themselves in most cases. It is not likely that the misshapen person on the anonymous print from 1720 at the left is representative of the appearance of the luikerwalen. At that time lanternists and also hawkers on the whole were mostly portrayed caricatural.