Pepper, JOHN HENRY

Pepper, JOHN HENRY, chemist and mechanical inventor, was born in Westminster on 17th June 1821, and in 1848 was appointed analytical chemist at the Royal Polytechnic, and has written several handbooks of popular science. But he is best known as the improver and exhibitor of 'Pepper's Ghost,' in its earliest form the invention of Henry Dircks (q.v.), a device for associating on the same stage living persons and phantoms to act together. The phantom is produced by a large sheet of unsilvered glass on the stage, practically invisible to the spectators, which reflects to them, along with a visible actor or actors, the appearance of another actor on an understage, who is himself invisible. Pepper travelled with this show in America and Australia, and became public analyst in Brisbane, Queensland.