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

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Roger Bacon has often been called the inventor of the camera obscura, or “dark room,” which is the heart of the system for taking and exhibiting pictures. (Illustration facing page 40.)

However, the original of the modern box pin-hole camera in its simplest form is only a dark room with a very small hole in one wall, and was never actually invented. The phenomenon of an image of what was on the outside appearing upside down in a dark room was surely a natural discovery first observed in the remote past. The “dark room” can easily be considered as a giant box camera with the spectator inside the box. An inverted image of the scene outside appears on the wall or floor with the light coming through a small circular opening, as in a “pin-hole” camera.

Record of the first use of the “dark room” for entertainment or science has been lost in the dim past. As late as 1727 the French Dictionnaire Universel suggested, in desperation, that Solomon himself must have invented the room camera. Until the 13th century, the images in the room camera were faint and upside down because no lens system was used. In ancient days and through the Middle Ages the camera was a wonderful and terrifying thing. The theatre always was some small darkened room. With a brilliant sun and the necessary small hole and a white wall or floor, the outside scene would be projected. Spectators and students certainly were thrilled and awed.