Object Name
Biunal Lantern
Date of Creation
1850s (date of invention uncertain, Wood’s was on sale in 1857)
Date of Film
2011
Description
A biunal magic lantern is a wooden box with two lenses, one on top of the other. The lenses have shutters and slots to insert glass slides. The light source is placed inside the box and the images are projected through either of the two lenses. It works in the same way as traditional magic lanterns, but allows for dissolving images and special effects.
Inventor
Edward George Wood, Samuel Highley, and W. C. Hughes (Servants of Light, 22)
Known Origins
When dissolving lanterns and the use of oil lamps for effects were developed, lanternists needed pairs of lanterns side by side. The use of limelight, however, made it possible to design multiple lanterns in a single unit. (Servants of Light, 22).
Object Narrative
E. G. Wood is given credit for inventing the first biunial magic lantern in London. A A Wood (the son of E. G. Wood) detailed his father’s invention in a manual published in 1891. He gives no date for the actual invention, but the lantern went on sale in 1857. Samuel Highley designed another early biunial lantern. His lantern had a dissolving tap to show dissolving views by limelight. W. C. Hughes developed a lantern that could be used as a biunial or separated and used as two lanterns side by side (Servants of Light, 22).
Predecessors
Henry Langdon Childe developed dissolving view lanterns (with a single lens) in the early 1840′s (Rossell 13).
Contemporaries
Zoetrope, Phenakistoscope (Rossell, 19), and Phantasmagoria Lantern (Servants of Light, 31).
Successors
Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope was a biunial magic lantern with rotating picture disks (Rossell 34).
Metadata Author
Elizabeth Walker, Kirby Thomas, Morgan Turner
Files
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Creative Commons License
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