Athanasius Kircher had attended the Jesuit College in Fulda from 1614 to 1618, when he joined the order himself as a seminarian.

At Heiligenstadt, he had taught mathematics, Hebrew and Syriac, and produced a show of fireworks and moving scenery for the visiting Elector Archbishop of Mainz, showing early evidence of his interest in mechanical devices.

He had joined the priesthood in 1628 and become professor of ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg, where he also taught Hebrew and Syrian, and began to show an interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Kircher had published his first book (the Ars Magnesia, reporting his research on magnetism) in 1631, but the same year he was driven by the continuing Thirty Years' War to the papal University of Avignon in France.

In 1633, he had been called to Vienna by the emperor to succeed Kepler as Mathematician to the Habsburg court.

On the intervention of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the order had been rescinded and he was sent instead to Rome to continue with his scholarly work, but he had already set off for Vienna.

On the way, his ship had been blown off-course and he arrived in Rome before he knew of the changed decision.

He bases himself in the city for the rest of his life, and from 1638, is to teach mathematics, physics and oriental languages at the Collegio Romano for several years before being released to devote himself to research.

He studies malaria and the plague, amassing a collection of antiquities, which he exhibits along with devices of his own creation in the Museum Kircherianum.

Kircher publishes a large number of substantial books on a very wide variety of subjects, such as Egyptology, geology, and music theory.

His syncretic approach pays no attention to the boundaries between disciplines which are now conventional: his Magnes, for example, is ostensibly a discussion of magnetism, but also explores other forms of attraction such as gravity and love.

Kircher is not now considered to have made any significant original contributions, although a number of discoveries and inventions (e.g., the magic lantern, an early prototype of the modern slide projector) have sometimes been mistakenly attributed to him.

In 1646, Kircher publishes Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, on the subject of the display of images on a screen using an apparatus similar to the magic lantern as developed by Christian Huygens and others.

Kircher describes the construction of a "catotrophic lamp" that uses reflection to project images on the wall of a darkened room.

Although Kircher did not invent the device, he makes improvements over previous models, and suggests methods by which exhibitors could use his device.

Much of the significance of his work arises from Kircher's rational approach towards the demystification of projected images.