Magic lantern session. 19th century artwork of a magic lantern session in Paris, France. The magic lantern was the ancestor of the modern slide projector. It was invented in China in the second century, and was in existence in Europe by the late 17th century. It used an oil lamp and a lens to projected images painted on glass plates onto a screen. Magic lanterns thrived in the 19th century, but fell out of use after the invention of motion picture cinematography in the 1880s. The scenes on the screen are of mothers and children reading, studying and working. Artwork from around 1810, from Le Bon Genre, a series of French artworks that documented Parisian fashion at the beginning of the 19th century.