PEPPERS GHOST 1862 -1863 JOHN HENRY PEPPER & HENRY DIR

Combining a little of
theatrical magic and a magic lantern show is the work of Dircks and Pepper.
The final outcome - Pepper's Ghost. As the story goes,
an engineer from Liverpool named Henry Dircks created a model of an apparatus
capable in theory of projecting a life-like ghost onto a stage before
an audience. As Thomas Weynants has correctly pointed out, this 'appearance'
of a ghost-like projection was in fact the "illuminating
[of] a real actor, dressed as a ghost" (Weynants,
Early Visual Media / Pre Cinema / The
Ghost in the Theatre: Pepper's Ghost Effect). Enter John Henry Pepper,
a chemist from London who takes it a step further; building a practical
working model for use in the theatre. Pepper's Ghost
was presented as a three-dimensional transparent sensation in 1863. Utilizing
one sheet of stationary glass angled to 45 degrees along with accurate
and sensitive lighting, Pepper's Ghost shocked audiences
then, and has continued to be used in plays, television and films up to
this day. Back projection as it was (and still is) known by lanternist's,
is called The Shuftan Process in film. It has been incorporated
by Hitchcock, Disney and Coppola, and used in films like A Christmas
Carol (Dickens), MacBeth and Hamlet.

Pepper was
a chemistry professor at London's Polytechnic Institute. He
had heard of an idea and had seen a model by Dircks, which described
and showed a ghost projection on stage. This was known as the
Dircksian Phantasmagoria.

Pepper built a large-scale presentation based on the model
and began to exhibit it. His first attempt was a success, incorporating
Pepper's Ghost into "The Haunted Man"
by Dickens. Due mostly to this production and many others that
followed, John Henry Pepper's name became synonymous with this
phantasmagoria event. Dircks and Peppers' relationship was short-lived
partly due to this fact. In Dirck's 1863 book 'The Ghost' he
pretty much summed up his view that he felt deceived by Pepper
over the development of Pepper's Ghost.

Pepper also wrote in 1890 his views of the relationship he
had with Dircks, saying he wanted Henry Dircks to also have
his share of the credit.

The
foundation of Pepper's Ghost was the actor
whose image was projected through the 45-degree angled mirror
upward and on to the stage as it were. The projectionist operated
from beneath the stage along with the actor(s). Other characters
on the stage would interact with the 'ghost(s)'. The image (above
right) shows how it would have appeared. The effect of Pepper's
Ghost is often seen today in modern cinema.

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THE HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
An illustrated Chronological History of the Development of Motion Pictures Covering 2500 Years Leading to the Discovery of Cinematography in the 1800's
http://precinemahistory.net
-- Paul T Burns