What’s the oldest book in our collection?

The invention of photography was announced to the public in 1839, but the oldest book in the George Eastman Museum’s rare books collection in the Richard and Ronay Menschel Library dates to nearly two hundred years earlier. Here, Head of Library and Archives Ken Fox tells us more about this special object:

Our extremely rare first edition of Athanasius Kircher’s Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae is a groundbreaking study of optics: the science of light and vision and the foundation to the understanding of photography. It was published in Rome in 1645 (we also have a beautiful copy of Kircher’s revised and expanded 1671 Dutch edition) and stands as one of the most important early treatises on optics. The book’s Latin title directly translates as “The Great Art of Light and Shadow,” but, as Kircher himself points out in the book’s preface, it can also be read as “The Magnetic Art of Light and Shadow” — a playful allusion to Kircher’s earlier study of magnetism, which he believed to be a primary natural force.

Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was a German polymath whose areas of expertise included philosophy, astronomy, ancient languages, Egyptology, music, physics, and even what we might consider early epidemiology: An eyewitness to the devastating plague that struck Naples, Italy, in 1656, Kircher may have been the very first scientist to examine contaminated blood under a microscope.

A devoted Jesuit, Kircher’s characteristic blend of Christian theology and secular science is apparent in the book’s magnificent frontispiece engraved by Peter Miotte of Burgundy. The elaborate illustration combines religious iconography, depictions of natural phenomena, and images of technology. Throughout this massive volume, Kircher theorizes about nearly everything that was then known about optics, from reflection, projection, luminescence, and microscopy, to the movement of the heavenly bodies through space.

A jewel of our collection, the book is a remarkable document of its time that also offers a glimpse of the future. In addition to the extraordinary engravings of various optical phenomena and such known devices as the camera obscura, the 1645 edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae also includes the description of an unusual invention Kircher called his “Steganographic Mirror” (see illustration) — a clear forerunner of the image projection machine known to historians of photography and cinema alike as the magic lantern.