1521 Cesare Cesariano, an architect and writer on art, asserts in his introduction to a new edition of Vitruvius that a Benedictine monk, Don Papnutio or Panuce, constructed a satisfactory _camera obscura_. Construction details are given for the first time in a published work. 1540 Erasmus Reinhold uses a _camera obscura_ to observe an eclipse of the sun at Wittenberg. Ancient astronomers had found it impossible to observe an eclipse unless there were clouds in the sky or the sun was near the horizon to cut down the light. 1550 Girolamo Cardano, an Italian physician and mathematician, describes how the box _camera obscura_ can be used for entertainment purposes. 1558 Giovanni Battista della Porta of Naples writes of making many light and shadow devices and earns the right to the title, “first screen showman.” 1568 Monsignor Daniello Barbaro introduces the projection lens in the _camera obscura_. 1585 Giovanni Battista Benedetti, a patrician of Venice, publishes the first complete and clear description of the _camera obscura_ or box camera equipped with a lens. 1589 Porta’s book, _Natural Magic_, reprinted with a new section on the use of the _camera obscura_ for entertainment purposes. 1604 Johannes Kepler explains the use of the “dark chamber” device for astronomical work. 1612 Christopher Scheiner, a German priest, uses the device to study sun spots. 1613 François d’Aguilon, another priest, stimulates the study of all branches of optics and is the first to coin the name “stereoscopic.” 1620 Sir Henry Wotton, diplomat and author, gives one of the first descriptions in English of the _camera obscura_ for drawing purposes. He describes a portable tent camera. 1626 Willebrord Snell promulgates his “law” on the angles of reflection and refraction, essential data for grinding and polishing lenses and other phases of advanced optics. 1644 or Athanasius Kircher invents the magic lantern at Rome. 1645 This is the first projector of magic shadows. 1646 Kircher’s book, _Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae_, “The Great Art of Light and Shadow,” is published. 1652 Jean Pierre Niceron shows how irregular figures can be made into plain figures through a mirror projection lens system. 1658 Gaspar Schott develops Kircher’s projection lantern in his _Wonders of Universal Nature and Art_. 1665 Walgenstein, a Dane, shows a Kircher-type magic lantern in France and elsewhere. 1669 Robert Boyle furthers interest in magic shadows with a description of a “Portable Darkened Room” in his _Systematic or Cosmical Qualities of Things_.