Enthusiasms

This month: Magic lanterns

- LUKE HONEY'S

Magic lanterns always remind me of Christmas. During the Victorian period, the work of Charles Dickens - especially his ghost stories, including A Christmas Carol - became a favourite subject for the magic lantern show. Dickens himself was the proud owner of a magic lantern, captivating his children with splendid performances which must have seemed miraculous at the time.

For those unfamiliar, a magic lantern is a mechanical slide projector that uses images or photographs on glass. Employing a range of techniques, operators could also create fantastic special effects and an illusion of movement, long before the invention of cinema. Surprisingly, magic lanterns have been around for almost four centuries. By the autumn of 1659, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens had created an early form of slide projector, using an optical lens that could be viewed by candlelight. In 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, Samuel Pepys bought his own lantern, noting in his diary that the 'pictures on glass... make strange things appear on the wall.'