History of Projectors Timeline

By 1659, Christiaan Huygens had developed a magic lantern that used a concave mirror, lamp, painted glass image, and focusing lenses to project pictures onto a wall or screen.

Image source: Magic lantern

In the 1671 edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, Kircher credited Danish mathematician Thomas Rasmussen Walgensten with the magic lantern, which Kircher regarded as a development of his own projection system.

The magic lantern became a popular medium for entertainment and education during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, projecting painted glass slides for audiences.

A few years before his death in 1736, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit reportedly constructed a solar microscope combining a compound microscope with camera obscura projection.

Image source: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Leonhard Euler demonstrated an opaque projector around 1756. This type of device, later commonly called an episcope, projected light reflected from opaque objects.

English instrument maker Benjamin Martin introduced the Opake Solar Microscope in 1774 for enlarged projection of opaque objects.

Image source: Projector

French scientist Jacques Charles is thought to have invented a similar megascope around 1780 and used it in lectures.

Humphry Davy published An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver in June 1802. The work reported early deliberate photographic experiments involving light-sensitive materials.

Image source: Darwin–Wedgwood family

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, solar opaque projectors were used mainly by portrait photographers and artists to enlarge photographic negatives, using sunlight to expose low-sensitivity materials.

Image source: Enlarger

Around 1872, Henry Morton used an opaque projector for demonstrations before huge audiences, including audiences at Philadelphia’s 3,500-seat Opera House.

Image source: Opaque projector

During the early and middle parts of the twentieth century, inexpensive opaque projectors were produced and marketed as toys for children.

The United States military became the first organization to use opaque projectors in quantity for training in 1940.

Commercial digital cameras appeared by 1990, and Microsoft PowerPoint gained image-file support in 1997. These developments accelerated the transition from 35 mm slides to digital images and digital projectors in education and training.

Image source: Video projector

Production of all Kodak Carousel slide projectors ceased in 2004, marking the decline of a major format in slide-based presentation technology.

Image source: Carousel slide projector

Manufacture and processing of Kodachrome film ended in 2009, completing a major stage in the shift away from photographic slide projection toward digital presentation.

Image source: Kodachrome