"Godwin's magisterial tome explains Kircher's many achievements (among them a prototype of the magic lantern, the ancestor of the slide-projector), and contains many of his astonishing illustrations, accompanied with detailed captions. He championed, but probably didn't invent, the magic lantern, the forerunner of modern slide projectors and even movie theaters. After explaining the various meanings of the seventeenth-century concept of illusio, I propose a new solution for the long-standing problem that Kircher added the 'wrong' illustrations to his description of the lantern. In 1646 Athanasius Kircher (c. 1602-1680), a German Jesuit priest, detailed improvements in "mirror writing" in Ars Magna lucis et umbrae. Athanasius Kircher would learn about the existence of the magic lantern via Thomas Walgensten and introduced it as “Lucerna Magica” in the widespread 1671 second edition of this book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. Athanasius Kircher would learn about the existence of the magic lantern via Thomas Walgensten and introduced it as “Lucerna Magica” in the widespread 1671 second edition of this book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. Images were painted on glass and projected on walls, cloth drapes, and, sometimes, on a wet cloth from behind the "screen". Bookmark the permalink. Bookmark the permalink. Athanasius Kircher was one of the first writing about the magic lantern. Soon after he arrived in Rome, Kircher received a rudimentary compound microscope. Comments are closed. I focus on the role of the magic lantern in the work of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher and the French Cartesian Abbe de Vallemont. The Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher described a lantern of some sort in the first edition of his book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae in 1646, and in the second edition of the book in 1671 he produced the first illustration of a magic lantern. Athanasius Kircher: Contains a short biography, an English translation of Kirchers most wellknown work about the Magic Lantern and of a letter from Kircher to a Swedish prince Esta página foi editada pela última vez às 17h50min de 14 de agosto de 2019.
Kircher also made a very brief description of a primitive method to use artificial light for projection. The magic lantern is one of the most important inventions of our history: it's the precursor of the film- and slide projector, of television, video and multimedia. The German-born Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–1680) was, in the words of an article reprinted on the website of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, an "inventor, composer, geographer, geologist, Egyptologist, historian, adventurer, philosopher, proprietor of one of the first public museums, physicist, mathematician, naturalist, astronomer, archaeologist, [and] author of more than 40 … Athanasius Kircher was one of the first writing about the magic lantern. He designed a "miraculous book" — maybe one of the world's earliest pop-up books — which should surely cement his status as the "coolest guy ever."
A source of knowledge too for students and scientists. Kircher claimed that Thomas Walgensten reworked his ideas from the previous edition of this book into a better lantern. Comments are closed. Kircher accused Walgensten of plaigiarizing his ideas and presented two different uses of magic lanterns in the new edition, which were more complex and thorough than any other depiction of the lantern at that time (Zielinski 136). Although Kircher is now known not to have made any original scientific contributions, several inventions and discoveries are often mistakenly attributed to him—most notably the magic lantern described in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. This projector wasn't very practical, though, but in about 15 years time it developed into what has become known as Laterna Magica , The Magic Lantern. By using a spherical water-filled flask as a condenser to concentrate the light, Kircher found that texts painted on the mirror's surface could be projected by light from a candle after dark. In May 2002, a group of distinguished scholars, writers and historians gathered at the New York Institute of the Humanities to address a burning question: "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?" Although Kircher is now known not to have made any original scientific contributions, several inventions and discoveries are often mistakenly attributed to him—most notably the magic lantern described in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae.