VMs: Re: Mediaeval book written entirely in cipher

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Some more Giovanni Fontana-related links...

(1) The Magic Lantern Society (based in Leicester, UK) has a history page:-
	http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/history2.htm

	The earliest reference I can find to anything like a projection
	lantern is from Liber Instrumentorum by Giovanni de
	Fontana. The illustration shows a man holding a lamp or
	lantern, and on the wall is a large projected picture of the devil.
	The detail of the lantern shows the outline of a small image
	of the devil. As translated by William Tebra, Giovanni
	describes it as "a nocturnal appearance for terrifying viewers"
	Clearly the device has no projection lens, so the image it
	produced would not have been very sharp, though no doubt
	it served its purpose. The image on the lantern is upright
	and the projected image is also upright, which is quite
	correct optically. A number of modern nursery toys work in
	the same way, and produce quite effective images. There
	is life in the simple idea yet. Although there is no
	particular evidence that Giovanni de Fontana invented the
	Magic Lantern, Willem Tebra argued very strongly in
	NMLJ Volume 2- Number 2, that Giovanni de Fontana
	"had described the real concept of a magic lantern"

The same page continues with discussing the connection between magic 
lanterns and two of our "usual suspects", Giovanni Baptista della Porta and 
Athanasius Kircher.

Honestly, how many times can the same cast of figures be reassembled, yet 
playing out a different (hi)story each time?

FYI, the "NMLJ" is the "New Magic Lantern Journal", the Magic Lantern 
Society's journal. Unfortunately, they don't hold back issues of volume 2, 
only from volume 3 and onwards.

(2) There's a reference to a kind of geared wheelchair described in 
Fortuna's "liber instrumentorum", in this slightly unnerving German site 
about a 14th-century "wind-wagon" :-)

(3) Note that there was also a 16th century engineer called Giovanni 
Fontana, who worked on hydrological problems around Rome. Just to confuse 
you, naturally. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....