Projector
optical device that projects an image or moving images onto a surface
A projector or image projector is an optical device that projects an image (or moving images) onto a surface, commonly a projection screen. Most projectors create an image by shining a light through a small transparent lens, but some newer types of projectors can project the image directly, by using lasers. A virtual retinal display, or retinal projector, is a projector that projects an image directly on the retina instead of using an external projection screen.
The most common type of projector used today is called a video projector. Video projectors are digital replacements for earlier types of projectors such as slide projectors and overhead projectors. These earlier types of projectors were mostly replaced with digital video projectors throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, but old analog projectors are still used at some places. The newest types of projectors are handheld projectors that use lasers or LEDs to project images.
Movie theaters used a type of projector called a movie projector, nowadays they are mostly replaced with digital cinema projectors.
Different projector types
Projectors can be roughly divided into three categories, based on the type of input. Some of the listed projectors were capable of projecting several types of input.
“Projector” enters the record as optical device that projects an image or moving images onto a surface. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Projector, optical and device can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311666. The Library of Congress control number is sh85107385. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Projector” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.