It is a device which

displays opaque materials by shining a bright lamp onto the object or image. The light reflected off the image is focused with mirrors, prisms and lenses to project the image onto a screen or wall.

 An opaque projector was originated as Pinhole Camera to Camera

Obscura. A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.
A camera obscura use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a

larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.

Principle of pinhole camera

Camera obscura

 On the 4th century BCE

On the 5th century BCE

Greeks such as Aristotle and Euclid wrote on naturally-occurring rudimentary pinhole cameras.

The Mohist philosopher Mo Jing in ancient China founded the principles of pinhole camera. He called his camera as a collecting plate or locked treasure room.

Aristotle

Euclid
Mo-Ti

In 10th-century CE

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) published this idea in the Book of Optics in 1021 CE. He improved on the camera after realizing that the smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image (though the less light). He provides the first clear description for construction of a camera obscura. (Latin word; Dark
chamber).

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965-1039)

His Book of Optics was translated into a Latin by Friedrich Risner and was printed in 1572.
Book of Optics

 In the 13th century CE

Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon commented on the pinhole camera. Robert Grosseteste made some contribution to camera obscura with his investigation to optics. Grosseteste's work in optics was relevant and would be continued by Roger Bacon.

Robert Grosseteste (1175-1243)

Roger Bacon made a studies of optics in part five of Opus Majus in 1267. He investigated the properties of the magnifying glass. His research in optics was primarily oriented by the legacy of Alhazen through a Latin translation. He was the first in the west to fully describe a magnifying glass. This led to the creation of eyeglasses in Italy around 1286.

Roger Bacon

Optic studies by Bacon Opus Majus

 On 15 century CE

Leonardo da Vinci (14521519 AD) described camer'a obscura in Codex Atlanticus. (1502). This work contains many descriptions and diagrams, illustrations and sketches of both the camera obscura and of the magic lantern.

Camera obscura illustration

In 16th century CE

Gemma Frisius, and Giambattista della Porta wrote on the pinhole camera, explaining why the images are upside down.
Reinerus Gemma Frisuis made studies of a solar eclipse projected into a dark room was the first documented use of a pinhole camera in history.

Gemma-Frisius's illustration of the solar eclipse . He observed in Louvain on January 24, 1544. He published 'De Radio Astronomica Et Geometrico in 1555 This pinhole camera drawing is an excellent illustration of a camera obscura and the workings of a pinhole image.

Reinerus Gemma Frisuis

(1508-1555)

 Giambattista della Porta added

convex lenses to the pinhole camera to magnify an object and to make a sharper projected image.
Giambattista della Porta perfected

the camera obscura with its XVII Book of the "Magiae Naturalis" in the study of mirrors. Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta. (1535-1615).
"That by night an image may seem to hang in a chamber." "It is also possible, using flat mirrors, to see things that are happening in far-off places . . .

He first coined the word Obscurum

Cubiculum in chapter IV.

Porta explains, "For the image is let into the eye through the eyeball just as here through the window".

On 1568 DANIEL BARBARO (1514 - 1570) This Venetian nobleman and architect describes the use of a biconvex lens in the camera obscura in his book La Practtica Della Perspecttiva. As did Porta, Barbaro suggested the use of the camera obscura to the painter. In describing the use of the convex lens, he shows that the image is much sharper and can therefore be outlined by a pen.

DANIEL BARBARO (1514 - 1570)

 On the early 17th century

Johannes Kepler, was a German astronomer who first used the term camera obscura in 1604. Kepler used a camera obscura originally for astronomical applications in a tent he had set up when he surveyed in Upper Austria.

Johannes Kepler

 On the 7th century

It is widely thought that the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, whose famous paintings include the milk maiden, and the girl with the pearl earring, used the camera obscura to achieve detail in some of his paintings.

Johannes Vermeer

milk maiden (The girl with the pearl earring)

Camera obscura, from a manuscript of military designs. Seventeenth century,

Artist using a portable camera obscura

Camera obscura as drawing machine (table machine). Line drawing 1685 from Johann Zahn

Camera obscura as table machine with mirror reflex device (SLR) for comfortable tracing. Copper engraving 1769 from G.F.Brander 'Drawing with the help of a camera obscura', Augsburg

 On 18th century
Camera Lucida A lightweight drawing aid that was patented 1806 by British Scientist William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828). It was a "light room" consisting of a rod to which a glass prism was affixed. The glass prism had two sides that reflected the scene at which it was aimed. William Hyde Wollason coined the term Camera Lucida in 1807.
This device was called the camera lucida designed in 1807.

 On 1850

Why me?

A Scottish scientist by the name of Sir David Brewster actually took the first photograph with a pinhole camera. Up until recently it was believed that Brewster himself coined the term "Pinhole" in "The Stereoscope"
Some examples of photographs taken using a pinhole camera.

camera obscura

Opaque Projector

 If by light reflected, it is

If the light traverses the

an episcopic.

object, the projection is said to be diascopic

Episcope also known as a magic lantern, a device which displays opaque materials by shining a bright lamp onto the object from above.

Epidiascope, which was capable of projecting images of both opaque and transparent images.