Rotating lantern

Manufacturer	Unknown
Date	ca. 1850-1890
Register	03408

Toy rotating lantern It is not a magic lantern, since there are no optics, nor can it project glass plates with images. It consists of a paper cylinder on which translucent images are drawn. Attached to the top of the cylinder is a propeller similar to the blades of a windmill. Inside the cylinder there is a light, usually a candle, which with its heat rotates the propeller and thus also the drawings of the paper cylinder, which appear illuminated inside and it projects the rotating images on the walls of the room. In a 1420 manuscript by the Venetian scholar Giovanni da Fontana we find a drawing that may show a lantern of this type, but without the propeller.

Tornar