Magic lantern

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector employing pictures on sheets of glass. It was developed in the 17th century and commonly used for educational and entertainment purposes. Constructed by Moses Holden between 1814–15. These were made for the purpose of illustrating his astronomical lectures.

Operation

The magic lantern used a concave mirror in back of a light source to direct as much of the light as possible through a small rectangular sheet of glass—a "lantern slide"—on which was the painted or photographic image to be projected, and onward into a lens at the front of the apparatus. The lens was adjusted to optimally focus the plane of the slide at the distance of the projection screen, which could be simply a white wall, and it therefore formed an enlarged image of the slide on the screen.

Apart from sunlight, the only light sources available at the time of invention in the 17th century were candles and oil lamps, which were very inefficient and produced very dim projected images. The invention of the Argand lamp in the 1790s helped to make the images brighter. The invention of limelight in the 1820s made them very much brighter. The invention of the intensely bright electric arc lamp in the 1860s eliminated the need for combustible gases or hazardous chemicals, and eventually the incandescent electric lamp further improved safety and convenience, although not brightness.

Magic lantern (disambiguation)

A magic lantern is an early type of image projector, an ancestor of the modern slide projector.

Magic lantern may also refer to:

Books

Music

Theatre

Software

Other uses

Magic

Magic usually refers to:

Magic or Magick may also refer to:

Aviation

Computing

Film and television

Magic Lantern (theater)

The Magic Lantern is a movie theater in Bridgton, Maine, United States. It was demolished due to a sinkhole located on-site. The theater reopened at its new location on February 8, 2008.

Original Magic Lantern

The original theater, which had a Victorian-style lobby, opened in 1929 as the "New Meserve Theater" followed by "The Mayfair", "The Brookside" and finally in 1977 "The Magic Lantern" by entrepreneur Tom Goodman. Goodman secured the worldwide premier of author Stephen King's The Shining at the Magic Lantern. King pulled the strings to get the print for this benefit screening for the local hospital fundraiser. The Magic Lantern was also the first theater in Maine to install Dolby Stereo Surround sound.

The theater closed in the late 1980s and was run for a year by the town of Bridgton's recreation department. The following year the local Howell family purchased the building. The family business, Down East, Inc., had occupied the ground floor for many years while the theater occupied the 2nd floor. The family decided to reopen the single screen theater and to bring movies back to Bridgton.

Lantern

A lantern is a portable lighting device or mounted fixture used to illuminate areas. Lanterns may also be used for signaling, as torches, or as general light sources outdoors. Low light level varieties are used for decoration. The term "lantern" is also used more generically to mean a light source, or the enclosure for a light source. Examples are glass pane enclosed street lights, or the housing for the top lamp and lens section of a lighthouse. The term is commonly associated with Chinese paper lanterns.

History

Lanterns are first spoken of by Theopompus, a Greek poet, and Empedocles of Agrigentum. Lanterns were used by the ancients in augury. The only known representation of an ancient Egyptian lantern probably is not much different from those spoken of by John the Evangelist in John 18:3 from the New Testament, where the party of men who went out of Jerusalem to apprehend Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is described as being provided “with lanterns and torches.” Lanterns in ancient China were made of silk, paper, or animal skin with frames made of bamboo or wood. One of the earliest descriptions of paper lanterns is found in records from Khotan, which describe a "mounting lantern" made of white paper.