MAGIC LANTERNS

Entertainment, History 2 Minutes

The magic lantern, or zoetrope, is little known today but it amazed and delighted audiences in Victorian drawing rooms. It also led, in the 20th century, to the invention of the slide projector and the cinema. In its final form, the zoetrope was a cylinder-shaped canopy of thin material suspended over a lamp. Vanes placed at the top caught the hot air rising from the lamp and made the cylinder rotate slowly.

On the sides of the canopy were thin panes of paper on which were painted pictures. As the cylinder revolved around the lamp, the light shone through the succession of pictures to give the illusion that the painted figures were moving — exactly the same principle as that behind modern motion pictures.

From Athanasius Kirchner’s “An Magna Lucis et Umbrae” of 1671

In 1868 Mr. W.B. Carpenter, the vice president of the Royal Society of London, stated with some confidence that the magic lantern had been invented by Michael Faraday, the famous pioneer of electricity as recently as 1836. He was certainly wrong, as one John Bate had already written about the zoetrope early in the 17th century. However, even Bate was merely describing a device long known elsewhere.

The principal of using heat to make small figures rotate is extremely ancient. In the Near East it goes back to Heron of Alexandria, who invented a toy with moving dancers in the 1st century AD. The Chinese version is even older, and far more advanced, as it involved the projection of images.

In 121 BC, a magician named Shao Ong staged a sort of seance for the Emperor Han Wu-ti, using moving images projected onto a screen. An earlier emperor, Han Gaozu, had a lamp in his possession in 207 BC that, when lit, showed the sparkling scales of turning dragons.

Around 180 AD the inventor Ting Huan created a “nine-storied hill censer,” which was apparently an extremely complicated multiple magic lantern. On it were strange birds and unusual animals, which turned around as the lamp burned.

By the 12th century AD, the most common form of zoetrope was the “horse-riding” or the “horse-pacing” lamp. After the lamp was lit a succession of prancing horses was projected onto the walls, moving as if they were alive. More sophisticated examples probably used lenses to produce stronger images. This was the type of magic lantern seen by early European visitors, and is undoubtedly provided the inspiration for the Jesuit priest of the China Mission Martin Martini (1614-1661). Martini presented the first lantern slides in Europe at Louvain, Belgium, in 1654, soon followed by other European scientists fascinated by the properties of light.

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Published by NebraskaFilly

Army veteran (1976-1979), retired with entirely too much time on my hands

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37 thoughts on “MAGIC LANTERNS”

  1. Morning All!
    sorry about yesterday and this morning…probably a quick hit and run…
    my granddaughter has planned every SECOND of her visit and I have a shadow…LOL
    but really loving it!!
    I will read everything tomorrow after they leave…
    today is shopping day and I can hear her stirring already…LOL

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Liked by 3 people

  9. Good morning y’all! Had great weather yesterday, but now the rain is back. I like those lanterns. I may have to get one or make one. going to bake a ham and do some potato salad for tomorrow. We will either go to my mom’s or she will come here for Easter. It’s close…2 houses down on the opposite side of the road.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Right. Good for the garden extension we did yesterday. Pretty much double dug the new section. My tiller needs work, so I did it by hand…good exercise!

        Liked by 1 person

          1. We only till the first time we prepare new ground, after that we just add soil and amendments. It was only a 10’x10′ extension so it wasn’t too bad.

            Liked by 1 person

  10. EXCERPT: “In a statement on Friday, Trump issued a full endorsement of Vance, calling him “the candidate most qualified and ready to win” against the likely Democrat Senate candidate, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), in the November midterm elections.

    “We cannot play games,” Trump wrote. “It is all about winning!”

    “Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades. He is our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race,” Trump continued:

    The Democrats will be spending many millions of dollars, but the good news is that they have a defective candidate who ran for President and garnered exactly zero percent in the polls. The bottom line is, we must have a Republican victory in Ohio. [Emphasis added]

    This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race — they’ve said great things about “Trump” and, like me, they love Ohio and love our Country. I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent — dangerous because they will have so much money to spend. [Emphasis added]

    However, J.D. will destroy him in the debates and will fight for the MAGA Movement in the Senate. He’s strong on the Border, tough on Crime, understands how to use Taxes and Tariffs to hold China accountable, will fight to break up Big Tech, and has been a warrior on the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election. J.D. is a Marine who served in the Iraq War, a graduate of The Ohio State University, and earned a Law Degree from Yale — a great student. With J.D. Vance, Ohio gets both brains and brawn. Ohio has been good to me, I won it twice, really BIG, and I have likewise been GREAT for Ohio. Let’s keep it going! [Emphasis added]

    Trump voters must “unite behind J.D.’s campaign because, unlike so many other pretenders and wannabes, he will put America First,” Trump wrote.

    “In other words, J.D. Vance has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” he continued. “He will not let you down.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/15/trump-endorses-populist-j-d-vance-in-ohio-republican-senate-primary-race/

    Liked by 1 person

  11. EXCERPT: “I get so ticked off whenever our contemptible congresscritters or their praetorian propagandists in the press call J6 an “insurrection.” Did the world really witness a bunch of rowdy Americans try to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021? Would some of the country’s strongest defenders of the right to bear arms really show up for battle bearing none? Did anybody in that crowd — many of whom were retirees welcomed into the Capitol Building by Capitol Police — actually believe that an “insurrection” was taking place?

    The answer to all three questions is a demonstrable, “No!” But to a federal government addicted to lying about absolutely anything, the “violent attack” on the Capitol was every bit as bad as 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. I don’t know what’s worse — that our government engages in such blatant propaganda against its citizens or that it can no longer be shamed into retracting its propaganda once its lies get called out.

    Words matter. They set verbal place markers for the important events through our history, and I do not like this new linguistic gauntlet being cavalierly thrown down by our government. If an unarmed group of patriotic tourists waving American flags constitutes an “insurrection,” then nearly any kind of rollicking assembly of citizen protesters can be deemed an “insurrection.” If free speech, public assembly, and petitioning government authorities for redress of grievances become “treasonous” whenever those same authorities feel disrespected or threatened, then most all political speech and passionate assembly (directed against the government) become acts of “rebellion.” And if anything can be so easily deemed “rebellion,” then the federal government burns all the middle ground between peaceful resistance and forceful revolution.

    By treating as an “act of war” what should have been rebuked no more severely than would have any other political rally morphing into something between the equivalent of a college naked-mile-run and an illicit riot, the U.S. government pushes citizens’ backs up against the wall. People will think twice before they protest the federal government, but because protest is now synonymous with “insurrection,” once people commit to the former, they will be prepared for the latter, too. I’d say that’s a pretty dangerous place marker for our country going forward.
    ————————
    Four people died on January 6 at the Capitol, and all were Trump supporters. A Capitol police officer gunned down Ashli Babbitt in cold blood moments after she was seen trying to de-escalate the pandemonium inside the Capitol. Rosanne Boyland was beaten and trampled, although her death was ruled an accidental overdose from amphetamines. Two other rallygoers died of heart attacks while protesting outside near the Capitol steps. January 6, 2021, was indeed a deadly day at the U.S. Capitol — deadly for Trump supporters.
    ————————-
    With no shame whatsoever, Joe Biden continues to lie to the world by declaring insouciantly that “five cops” were “killed” during the January 6 “insurrection.” It’s a dirty blood libel from a dirty and deranged man whose dementia cannot excuse his vile demagoguery intended to cleave the country in two. When the federal government cannot be relied upon to report truthfully about the deaths of patriotic civilians and police officers, it cannot be relied upon to report truthfully about much of anything. Maybe the feds should add their own dissipating credibility to their already long list of J6 casualties.

    I will say right now that nothing good can come from the federal government’s attempts to harass and criminally imperil Trump by demonizing his supporters, siccing the FBI on J6 political protesters for committing vague crimes hardly more serious than ordinary trespass, locking up defendants awaiting trial for years, or denying the accused access to thousands of hours of potentially exculpatory video evidence.

    Nothing good can come from organized efforts to remove Republicans from election ballots because they had the temerity to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly during a political rally in support of the sitting president. Nothing good can come from partisan witch hunts conducted by shadowy operatives and anti-American zealots committed to casting shameful, ridiculous, and dangerous aspersions against ordinary patriots intended to render protected political speech as tantamount to the Confederacy’s Civil War rebellion. Nothing good can come from the horrendous gall of the illegitimate congressional J6 Committee in declaring President Trump and his eighty million voters “domestic terrorists,” especially when Trump supporters have disproportionately served in the armed forces in defense of this great land. These kinds of cheap and partisan tactics, bathed in Machiavellian malice, rarely have the effect governing authorities intend.

    Right now, it is the federal government’s position that anybody remotely connected to the J6 political rally be scorned and ostracized. It is the federal government’s position that J6 political prisoners be locked up, tormented, and forgotten. It is the federal government’s position that only speech condoned by political authorities may be freely spoken. The federal government’s positions, in other words, are as crooked as the politicians infesting it.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/will_j6_be_remembered_more_like_the_boston_massacre.html

    Liked by 1 person

  12. EXCERPT: “See the pattern? One, the shareholders get stiffed, watching the value of their battered stock going down. Two, they get told by the board that it’s really a good thing, as if everyone who bought shares in this company did so out of a sentimental love for their company for its own sake, or because the stock certificates would look so pretty on their mantles. This is garbage: Stocks, as Investor’s Business Daily’s founder Bill O’Neill memorably used to explain to his company’s employees, “are only good if they go up.”

    Twitter would have you think otherwise. And they open themselves and their company up to shareholder lawsuits if they don’t have a clause in there about protecting themselves, along with some insurance to go with it, if they do. The reality is, they revealed their hand. CNBC notes this: “Such a move is a common way to fend off a potential hostile takeover by diluting the stake of the entity eying the takeover.”

    But CNBC only gets it half right. What’s not common is adopting such measures right as the takeover offer is happening. Normal boards adopt these “poison pills” well in advance of any potential hostile takeover in a plan-ahead move to keep the matter stable. These guys didn’t — they didn’t plan at all — they assumed they were too big, too important, and any billionaire with money to buy shares in their company would inevitably be as progressive and leftwing as they are.

    That they made this belated move obviously reveals that they’re in panic about their potential new owner, who has explicitly stated that he wants to buy the company in order to restore the platform’s free speech principle, something it benefits from via Section 230 protections on from Congress on, and they are reacting now by spewing and frothing in a bid to obsure … something.

    One of those things is that they’ve testified under oath before Congress that they never ban people for political reasons and have no biases. Nobody believes that, of course, they ban conservatives all the time, including President Trump, while leaving President Putin and the Taliban completely free to tweet. But up until now, they’ve gotten away with that gaslighting since no one has the goods on them to prove otherwise.

    Musk, though, should he buy the company, might get his hands on the proof — of their systematic suppression of conservatives’ voices, and that could be a problem. That’s the ring that the Gollums of Twitter are guarding.”

    Reference to SD: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/elon_musk_runs_into_the_twitter_poison_pill.html

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Alrighty then – I just learned a new phrase: “testicle tanning” – ever heard of that???? Tucker Carlson Originals this season is going to cover the decline in testosterone in the US. See? I was right – nudism really IS a good thing!!! ROFL

    EXCERPT: “Yes, you read that right! Testicle sunning or “sun on your balls”– not to be confused with the viral trend of butthole sunning – is the practice of exposing your testicles to direct sunlight. This is done so as to reap the benefits of up to a 200% increase in testosterone levels, and is one of the best methods of boosting testosterone naturally.”

    https://tantricacademy.com/testicle-sunning/

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I sometimes tend to harp on this principle far too much but…..word definition affects every facet of life.

    From Gab: Asha Logos @AshaLogos
    6h
    ·
    A little known fact..

    it’s said that Noah Webster was motivated to create his dictionary (which would go on to become the Merriam-Webster standard) because he felt certain powers would change the constitution, ‘not by altering the text itself, but by changing the meaning of words.’

    Impressive foresight, with regard to how incremental manipulative/deceitful cultural change actually transpires, in real world conditions.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. TGP headlines I read them so you don’t have too.

    “We Are Racists” – Pope Francis Goes Woke in Good Friday Message Accusing the West of Racism and Describing Jesus as a Refugee—– WTF?

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/racists-pope-francis-goes-woke-good-friday-message-accusing-west-racism-describing-jesus-refugee/

    27-Year-Old Italian Swimmer Dies Following Heart Attack Only a Month After Engagement— Nothing to see here move along/

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/27-year-old-italian-swimmer-dies-following-heart-attack-month-engagement/

    Fairfax County Virgina Received Over $1.2 Million in Zuckerbucks in 2020 Election – Does This Explain the Three 300,000 Biden Ballot Drops on Election Night?—– imagine that

    It Looks Like the War Will Come Home for the Midterms— We’ll they’ll steal it so….

    CIA Notes Confirm US Intelligence Officials Targeted Trump After He Was Elected — Ran a Coup on President Trump While in Office—- Grrrr an nothing comes of it

    Majority of Rep. Liz Cheney’s Donors Do Not Live in Wyoming—–Not shocked at all

    Russiagate Hoaxer and Serial Liar Adam Schiff Is Producing Videos to Promote Himself as Speaker of the House— Of course

    Crazy Insane New Yorker Article Inverts Reality – Praises Hillary’s Attorney Marc Elias for Being “The First Defense” for Democracy—- The MSM everyone

    Both Biden And Kamala Gave Less To Charity Than Those With Similar Income— You expect them to use there own money?

    Biden Gang Caught Altering Another Transcript to Eliminate Another Biden Gaffe—– your going to need a bigger Erasers

    After Specializing in Abortions and Baby Body Part Sales, Planned Parenthood Now Raking in Dollars in Transgender Services—- And you wonder why they push this

    “Scientists” Glue Hands To Buildings, Throw Fake Blood Protesting Climate Change—- Now pull your hand off

    Employee Awarded $450,000 in Lawsuit Settlement Over Unwanted Office Birthday Party— Ok……..

    Liked by 1 person

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