Pop culture received a startling infusion from the 19th century this week: the purported hologram of rapper Tupac Shakur that made news at the Coachella music festival on Sunday night was really based on an illusion devised in the mid-1800s.The image of Tupac was not really a hologram, it was a bit of elaborate stagecraft known as a Pepper's Ghost. The illusion was first created by a British inventor named Henry Dircks, who called the trick The Dircksian Phantasmagoria.
The technique was clever, but difficult to implement in a normal theater, as an actor had to be in a special compartment under a hole cut in the stage. As he performed, stagehands would manipulate mirrors to project his image upward, onto panes of glass. The actor would appear as a translucent figure onstage.
The method of Dircks was improved upon by a British scientist, John Henry Pepper. With some modifications, the illusion could be performed in an ordinary theater, and it was used in a production of The Haunted Man, a play based on a Christmas tale by Charles Dickens.
Over time the illusion has been employed in theme parks and museums. And modern teleprompters are based on the principle first used in the Dircksian Phantasmagoria.
Modern versions of the Pepper's Ghost — the name which stuck — employ modern materials which were obviously not available in the 19th century. The image of Tupac Shakur which appeared to be performing onstage was apparently a film projected onto a clear sheet of Mylar, lightweight plastic with a reflective surface.
Illustration: Diagram from a book by Henry Dircks relating principles of the Dircksian Phantasmagoria/E. and F.N. Spon, now in public domain
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