Porta recommended the use of miniature models of animals and natural scenes, the first stage sets for “motion pictures,” with puppet-like characters. He wrote, “Those present in the show-room will behold the trees, animals, hunters and other objects without knowing whether they are true or only illusions.” Porta revealed that he had put on shows of this kind many times for his friends and the illusions of reality were so good that the delighted audience could scarcely be told how the effects were achieved. He also told how the audience could be terrified. Porta concluded this account with a description of how to use the camera in order to observe an eclipse, something which Bacon or one of his contemporaries had already worked out. Before good instruments were developed, the room camera was an excellent device to save the astronomer’s eyesight and still give him a good view of an eclipse. The giant 200-inch telescope at Palomar in California is closely related to the original use of the camera for astronomical work. There does not seem to be any evidence that Porta developed a portable camera, the direct ancestor of the modern photographic camera. He also did not appear to have much success with his lenses, as he found the concave mirrors as good as or better than a _camera obscura_ with a lens. The general subject of the chapter which included the camera was “Herein Are Propounded Burning Glasses” “and the Wonderful Sights to be Seen by Them.” (Recall Archimedes and his Burning Glasses.) Let Porta tell it: “What could be seen more wonderful, than that by reciprocal strokes of reflexion, images should appear outwardly hanging in the air and yet neither the visible object nor the glass seen? that they may seem not to be repercussions of the glasses, but spirits of vain phantasms.” In a book on refraction, published in 1593, the eye and the _camera obscura_ were compared by Porta. He also covered refraction, vision, the rainbow, prismatic colors (all subjects treated by the early experimenters in optics). Porta had a great, though mixed, influence. Even in his own mind he did not seem able to decide whether the magic shadows should be used to deceive the public as effects of secret powers or whether they should be used for genuine entertainment and instruction. After Porta, the “dark chamber” was developed for the use of painters and artists in England and on the continent. _V_ KEPLER AND THE STARS _Kepler, German astronomer, develops the scientific principles of the_ camera obscura _and applies magic shadows to the stars of the heavens--Scheiner and D’Aguilon improve image devices_.