Although the effect is called “Pepper’s Ghost”, back in the 1860s an English engineer by the name of Henry Dircks was the first to create a miniature working model of the effect. He first presented the effect at the London Polytechnic Institution. The design was not practical for a full sized stage, though. His method would have needed theatres to rebuild themselves completely just to get the effect working. Fortunately a man by the name of John Henry Pepper (1821 - 1900), an analytical chemist, witnessed the optical effect and realized the effect could be modified to easily be incorporated into existing theatres. Soon after, Pepper and Dircks entered into a partnership and eventually found a workable solution to their problem. On November 11th, 1879, Pepper and Dircks applied for a patent together and Pepper later went on to debut the effect in a show entitled “The Knight Watching His Armor” (Davis). Rapidly the effect caught on and was used in numerous other presentations. Because Pepper first showed the effect to great success, his name was forever tied to the effect and the nickname “Pepper’s Ghost” stuck. Some of the high profile shows “Pepper’s Ghost” was used in include Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and multiple Shakespeare productions including Hamlet and Macbeth (Davis). Perhaps the grandest use of this effect would be its use in Disneyland’s the Haunted Mansion. In the 90 foot long ballroom, multiple animatronic ghosts perform and move around out of sight of the viewer while the viewer travels along an elevated mezzanine over the ballroom. The reflections in the glass create the transparent ghosts. Amazingly enough, this scene is duplicated in Disneyland parks around the world including Tokyo and Paris.