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First projector
One of the earliest devices that resembled a projector was the magic lantern. It was created in 1659 by Christian Huygens, a Dutch scientist who used a concave mirror to direct light from a lamp onto a glass slide that had the image. The light passed through the glass slide and projected the image on a screen using focusing lenses. Magic lanterns were one of the first image projecting devices to gain popularity in the education and entertainment domains. -
Opaque projector
Henry Morton created an opaque projector in 1872. It was designed for large audiences and made use of an oxyhydrogen lamp to project the images. -
Megascope
Jacques Charles, a French scientist, invented a device called the megascope. It functioned like the opaque projector and was primarily used by Jacques Charles for lectures. -
Slide projector
The decades from the 1940s to 1960s saw the development of the earliest computers. The decades also witnessed the widespread adoption of different types of optical projectors. These projectors made use of optical mechanisms and bulbs for projecting images. -
Overhead projectors
The overhead projectors or OHPs are a variant of the slide projectors. They were introduced a few years after the slide projectors. The working of an overhead projector is similar to the slide projector. The light from a source like a high-powered halogen bulb is passed through a condensing lens onto the object for projecting images on the screen. -
Digital Era
The years from the 1970s to 1990s witnessed the introduction of some of the earlier digital formats. Hardware and software innovations gained momentum and there were some groundbreaking discoveries. Modern projectors still utilize refined versions of the technologies discovered in this era. -
LDC projectors
The introduction of the LCD technology enabled the creation of the LCD projectors. While liquid crystals were discovered several decades ago, displays made from them became available commercially only in the 1960s and 1970s. -
UHD projectors
Continuous improvements in technologies have allowed manufacturers to produce high-resolution displays ranging from 1920x1080 pixels to 3840x2160 pixels. There are new variants of the projector chips available that utilize special technologies to output images of UHD (3840x2160) and 4K (4096x2160) resolutions. -
Laser Projectors
Laser projectors are the latest innovation in the field of projectors. Laser projectors, in essence, use one of the three technologies for producing images – DLP, LCD or LCoS. However, they employ lasers as the source of light instead of lamps or LEDs. As lasers produce a highly coherent beam of light, it allows the projector to produce high-quality images. They also generate less heat and have a longer lifespan.