To Bacon must go the credit for the first description of the camera used for scientific purposes. Two Latin manuscripts, attributed to him or one of his pupils, in which the use of the room camera to observe an eclipse is described, have been found in the French National Library. It was pointed out that this method makes it possible for the astronomer to observe the eclipse without endangering his eyesight by staring at the sun. It is certain Bacon used a mirror-lens device for entertainment and instruction. In his _Perspectiva_ there appears the following passage: Mirrors can be so arranged that, as often as we wish, any object, either in the house or the street, can be made to appear. Anyone looking at the images formed by the mirrors will see something real but when he goes to the place where the object seems to be he will find nothing. For the mirrors are so cleverly arranged in relation to the object that the images appear to be in space, formed there by the union of the visible rays. And the spectators will run to the place of the apparitions where they think the objects actually are, but will find nothing but an illusion of the object. Bacon’s description is not clear: the effects and not the apparatus are described. The words could apply to a variation of the camera principle but it seems more likely that only a mirror system, related to the modern periscope, was used. The device did not achieve projection in the strict sense. Bacon’s description clearly states that through the use of mirrors objects were made to appear where they were not. In effect, this reminds us of the illusion of the modern motion picture. There are stories that native people when first seeing motion pictures, attempt to run up to the screen and greet the pictures. It is only through experience that they learn the characters are not actually alive on the screen. Bacon knew that light and shadow instruments were not always used for worthy purposes of entertainment or instruction but were also used to deceive. He vigorously attacked the practices of necromancy--showing the correctness of his position even though in gossip his name has been linked with the “Black Art”, as was Kircher’s four centuries later. “For there are persons,” Bacon wrote, “who by a swift movement of their limbs or a changing of their voice or by fine instruments or darkness or the cooperation of others produce apparitions, and thus place before mortals marvels which have not the truth of actual existence.” Bacon added that the world was full of such fakers. It is not surprising that those skilled in the black arts tried to use the strange medium of light and shadow to impose upon the ignorant and unwary.