The Magician's Own Book, or, the Whole Art of Conjuring / Being a complete hand-book of parlor magic, and containing over one thousand optical, chemical, mechanical, magnetical, and magical experiments, amusing transmutations, astonishing sleights and subtleties, celebrated card deceptions, ingenious tricks with numbers, curious and entertaining puzzles, together with all the most noted tricks of modern performers.

by George Arnold; Frank Cahill

The magic lantern or phantasmagoria, may be used in a number of marvelous ways, but in none more striking than in raising an apparent specter. Let an open box, A B, about three feet long, a foot and half broad, and two feet high, be prepared. At one end of this place a small swing dressing glass, and at the other let a magic lantern be fixed with its lenses in a direction towards the glass. A glass should now be made to slide up and down in the groove C D, to which a cord and pulley should be attached, the end of the cord coming to the part of the box marked A. On this glass the most hideous specter that can be imagined may be painted, but in a squat or contracted position, and when all is done, the lid of the box must be prepared by raising a kind of gable at the end of the box B, and in its lower part at E, an oval hole should be cut sufficiently large to suffer the rays reflected from the glass to pass through them. On the top of the box F place a chafing dish, upon which put some burning charcoal. Now light the lamp G in the lantern, sprinkle some powdered camphor or white incense on the charcoal, adjust the slide on which the specter is painted, and the image will be thrown upon the smoke. In performing this feat the room must be darkened, and the box should be placed on a high table, that the hole through which the light comes may not be noticed.

THE THAUMATROPE.

This word is derived from two Greek words, one of which signifies wonder, and the other to turn. It is a very pretty philosophical toy, and is founded upon the principle in optics, that an impression made upon the retina of the eye lasts for a short interval after the object which produced it has been withdrawn. The impression which the mind receives lasts for about the eighth part of a second, as may be easily shown by whirling round a lighted stick, which if made to complete the circle within that period, will exhibit not a fiery point, but a fiery circle in the air.

THE BIRD IN THE CAGE.

Cut a piece of cardboard of the size of a penny piece, and paint on one side a bird, and on the other a cage; fasten two pieces of thread, one on each side, at opposite points of the card, so that the card can be made to revolve by twirling the threads with the finger and thumb; while the toy is in its revolution, the bird will be seen within the cage. A bat may in the same manner be painted on one side of the card, and a cricketer upon the other, which will exhibit the same phenomenon, arising from the same principle.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE PHANTASMASCOPE.

The above-named figure is a Thaumatrope, as much as the one we are about to describe, although the term Phantasmascope is generally applied to the latter instrument; which consists of a disc of darkened tin-plate, with a slit or narrow opening in it, about two inches in length. It is fixed upon a stand, and the slit placed upwards, so that it may easily be looked through. Another disc of pasteboard, about a foot in diameter, is now prepared and fixed on a similar stand, but with this difference, that it is made to revolve round an axis in the center. On this pasteboard disc, paint in colors a number of frogs in relative and progressive positions of leaping; make between each figure a slit of about a quarter of an inch deep; and when this second disc is made to revolve at a foot distance behind the first, and the eye is placed near the slit, the whole of the figures, instead of appearing to revolve with the disc, will all appear in the attitudes of leaping up and down, increasing in agility as the velocity of the motion is increased. It is necessary, when trying the effect of this instrument, to stand before a looking-glass, and to present the painted face of the machine towards the glass.

A very great number of figures may be prepared to produce similar effects—horses with riders in various attitudes of leaping, toads crawling, snakes twisting and writhing, faces laughing and crying, men dancing, jugglers throwing up balls, &c.; all of which, by the peculiar arrangement above detailed, will seem to be in motion. A little ingenuity displayed in the construction and painting of the figures upon the pasteboard disc will afford a great fund of amusement.