Magic Lantern

From Brass Goggles

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image/slide projector developed in the 17th through 19th centuries.

The device commonly has a concave or what is called a "perfect" mirror (one which is silverd and polished on the perfectly-flat surface of the reflector glass rather than the rear of same) min front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image painted or printed onto it. The light rays cross an aperture (which is an opening at the front of the apparatus), and hit a lens. The lens throws an enlarged picture of the original image from the slide onto a screen.

The main light sources used during the time that the device was invented in the late 16th through late 17th centuries were candles or oil lamps. These light sources were quite inefficient and produced weak projections. The invention of the Argand lamp in the 1790s helped to make the projected images brighter. The invention of the limelight in the 1820s made it even brighter, and following that the inventions of the electric arc lamp in the 1860s, and then incandescent electric lamps all further improved the projected image of the magic lantern.

Operations Commander Lt. Rourke commonly uses a magic latern kept aboard the Marigold for his presentations of Mission objectives and relevant information.