The history of magic lanterns is in debate. No one knows who truly invented this precursor to moving pictures. Most scholars now agree, though, that Christian Huygens invented the first of these devices in the late 1650s. some other sources give credit to the Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana in the fifteenth century, or the German priest Athanasius Kircher in the late 1640s.

The magic lantern works by utilizing a concave mirror placed in front of a light source. Because it is concave, it gathers light and projects it through a piece of glass with an image. After passing through the slide, the image goes through a lens, which then enlarges the image and displays that image on some sort of screen or wall. At first the light was provided by an oil lamp or candle, but these were not bright enough to be effective. as time went on, more effective light sources were invented, such as the Argand lamp in the 1790s, the limelight in the 1860s, and finally incandescent bulbs with electricity.

Eventually these magic lanterns were used to make moving images by using two slides placed on top of each other. One of the slides contained a stationary object, and the other had the object that would move on it. A pulley was used to move the second slide. For a time these magic lanterns gained in popularity among magicians, and were used to scare people by showing moving ghosts or demons.

Eventually the magic lantern started showing up in the United States, and was used by a lot of magicians, but also in the 1920s to show pornographic stripteases, and other forms of entertainment. These early moving pictures led to the invention of the zoopraxiscope, and also the modern movie projectors that we know and love today. Without magic lanterns, who knows what would have happened with the development of modern film.