Scientific book

Author	Athanasius Kircher
Title	"Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae"
Place	Rome (Italy)
Date	1646
Register	2334

Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit priest, archaeologist, philologist, collector of scientific experiments and an enthusiast of geographical exploration. In his work Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (The great art of light and shadow), he discussed comets, eclipses, colours and optical experiments. This first edition of 1646 includes the description of a primitive projection system, where the rays of light reflected in a mirror are projected through a lens to a screen. In the second edition of 1671, it includes the first two printed illustrations of a magic lantern, probably when Christiaan Huygens and others had already described and even tried it out. However, the wide dissemination of these two illustrations led to the initial deduction that Kircher was the inventor of the magic lantern. Currently, however, most specialists question this and are dubious about the correct functioning of the magic lantern described by Kircher in the illustrations of the second edition of his book, especially because of errors in the optical system (he places the lens between the light source and the glass slide).

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