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Roger Bacon, English monk of the 13th Century, studies the ancients—and the Greeks—and inaugurates the scientific study of magic shadows and devices for creating them.

Roger Bacon made a great contribution to human knowledge, especially in scientific matters. Yet this great philosopher and scientist was generally regarded as “Friar Bacon,” a mad monk who played with magic and dealt with the powers of darkness. This myth persisted even though Bacon’s contemporaries had bestowed upon him the title of “Doctor Mirabilis.” Studies made in the 19th century and the first part of this century have tended to confirm him in his proper high place in history.

Roger Bacon was born at Ilchester in Somersetshire, England, about 1214, the year before the Magna Charta was signed. In those days serious education began early. When Bacon was 12 or 13 he was sent to Oxford. Later on he continued his studies at Paris. In his youth Bacon’s family gave him the considerable sums he needed for his education.

After completing his studies, Bacon was a professor at Oxford and then entered the Franciscan Order. As a monk he found the pursuit of learning somewhat more difficult even though the libraries of the religious orders were the best of the period and most of the learned men were ecclesiastics. After having taken a vow of poverty Bacon had difficulty in obtaining from some of his superiors money to buy pens and pay copyists. Certain authorities did not look with complete satisfaction on his experimental science investigations and they liked even less his barbed comments on other philosophers of the day.

Bacon as a member of the Franciscan Order found himself confronted with the rule requiring his superiors’ permission to publish any work. However, Pope Clement IV, a Frenchman, had the requirement lifted so far as Bacon was concerned by personally communicating with him and asking him to publish his studies. When that Pope was Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulques (or Foulquois), the Papal Delegate in England, he had been impressed with Bacon’s scholarship.

Following the Pope’s command, Bacon set out to do the job. After some difficulty in obtaining money for pens and copyists, the three great works, Opus Majus, Minus and Tertium (1267–68) were completed in the almost unbelievable time of 18 months. These, together with his short book, “Concerning the marvelous power of art and nature and the ineffectiveness of magic”—also known as “Letter concerning the secret works of art and nature”—are his best known writings.

As soon as his first book was completed Bacon sent it off to the Pope in care of his friend, John of Paris. Unfortunately, Pope Clement IV died within a year of receiving Bacon’s book and no official papal action was taken in connection with his scientific opinions. Bacon continued to teach, study and experiment at Oxford where he held for a time the office of Chancellor. Some say he was eventually imprisoned; the record is not clear.

The most interesting part of Bacon’s work, so far as motion picture prehistory is concerned, is contained in his letter “On the Power of Art and Nature and Magic.” It is in this work that Bacon speaks of the many wonderful devices he knows about and which would be in service in the future. Here we read of self-propelled vehicles, under-water craft, flying machines, gun-powder (the idea of which probably came from the East), lenses, microscopes, telescopes. Bacon claimed that he had seen all these wonderful things with the exception of the flying machine. But even this did not leave him at a loss, for he tells us that he has seen drawings by a man who has it all worked out on paper!

In that book of Bacon there is also the theory of going westward to India—the idea that later resulted in the discovery of America. The idea, therefore, was not original with Christopher Columbus. Bacon deserves great credit, for his views at least had a direct influence. His statements were used without credit by Pierre d’Ailly in his Imago Mundi, published in 1480. We know Columbus consulted this work, for he quoted a passage in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella when seeking financial support for the voyage. And it was the very passage of Bacon, stolen by d’Ailly, which Columbus used to drive home his arguments with the King and Queen of Spain.

Bacon devoted ten whole years to the study of optics and some of his best work was done in that field. The principal influence on Bacon in this subject was the work of Alhazen, the Arab. The concentration of rays and the principal focus, knowledge necessary for fine camera work, as well as good picture projection, were familiar to Bacon. This was an advance over Euclid, Ptolemy and Alhazen. Bacon recognized that light had a measurable speed. Up to that time most men thought that the speed of light was infinite. (Measurements were not made until the 19th century.) Bacon also studied the optical illusions pertaining to motion and rest, fundamental for the motion picture. He belonged to the school of vision study that believed we see by something shot out from the objects viewed. This is directly opposed to the idea of Lucretius and others who held that something was shot out of the eye to make sight possible. There is no evidence that Bacon actually invented a telescope but he certainly was aware of the principle. He planned a combination of lenses which would bring far things near.

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.

The Romans learned about the camera from the Greeks, who probably had obtained the knowledge from the East where, with brilliant sun in which the best results could be obtained, it is likely the effects were first noticed. Such learned Arabs as Alhazen are believed to have had a knowledge of the use of the room camera, but Alhazen did not leave any good description of it in his writings.

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.

The death of Roger Bacon in 1294 was the passing of one of the greatest men in the history of light and shadow. With him the art-science had reached a point at which magic shadow entertainment devices could be built. Friar Bacon did much more to prepare the way for devices which were not to be perfected for centuries than merely make a contribution to the knowledge of light, lenses and mirrors. He blazed the way for all later experimental scientists. Up to his time emphasis had been placed on theoretical, speculative thinking. Bacon showed that science must be based on practical experimentation as the foundation for its principles.