Note 106 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
The invention of the camera obscura certainly belongs to Giambattista Porta, and is described in his Magiæ Naturalis, sive de Miraculis Rerum Naturalium, Libri Viginti; Antwerp, 1561. An English translation made in 1658 exists, but I have not seen it.
Hooke, in one of the earliest volumes of the Philosophical Transactions, describes as new many of the phenomena mentioned by Porta, and particularly the images of the dark chamber.