Читать книгу Magic Shadows. The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures онлайн

22 страница из 66

The possibility of actual use of the Burning Glasses to start fires on the ships of an invader was not entirely dismissed by Athanasius Kircher who made a special trip to Syracuse in 1636 to study the problem on the spot. He wrote in the same book in which the magic lantern is described that he had constructed a burning glass or lens which started a fire at a distance of 12 feet and that a friend of his, Manfred Septal, on February 15, 1645, shortly before Kircher’s book was completed, had started a fire at 15 paces.

Kircher did not believe burning glasses could be used to start a fire at a great distance as claimed by some scientists and experimenters. He said that Cardano’s story of burning at 1,000 paces was ridiculous, as were exaggerated claims of Porta. But Kircher did point out that there may be something of truth in the original story of Archimedes because, in his opinion, ships of the attacking force would be anchored just off the walls of the city, perhaps only 25 to 50 feet away. This was done so the full force of the fleet’s armament of the day could be thrown against the defenders on the walls and yet the men of the ships would be out of range of hand-to-hand encounters with the Syracusans.