account of this form of entertainment in his Mass  
Communication  (pp. 13­14):

          In the days when Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, printed 
     from movable type, was stirring wonder in Germany, 
     another innovation was gaining a foothold in Italy. It was 
     a kind of game, having at first no apparent relationship 
     to the dissemination of information or ideas.
          The device was described in Leonardo da Vinci’s 
     unpublished notes. If on a sunny day you sit in a darkened 
     room with only a pinhole open on one side, you see on an 
     opposite wall or other surface images of the outside 
     world—a tree, a man, a passing carriage.
          The principle was described in detail in the book, 
     Natural Magic , by Giovanni Battista della Porta, published 
     in 1558. A few years later it became known that a lens, in