At http://www.laterna.com.tr/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48 
is an explanation of the origin of the names:

    The first laternas were crafted in Istanbul by the Italian Giuseppe
  Turconi and the Greek Joseph Armaos.  Piano parts were mainly used in
  its assembly ...
    The name "latern" is a modification of Italian "la torno," or "that
  which turns;" whereas it owes the name "rhombia" to the fact that the
  name of an Italian maker of laternas, POMBIA, was imprinted on some
  of them, and the Greeks reading these Roman letters in the Greek
  alphabet saw the word "rhombia."
    In the 1940s, the gramophone took the stage and pushed laterna into
  the background.  But in Athens of 1955 the grand master Armaos wrote
  music for laterna for the film "Laterna, Phtohia kai Phliotimo
  Philotimo (Laterna, benevolent and poor Poverty, and Mettle)."

Video clips from the film, featuring the laterna, are at

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkt8P2X6jQ
 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CBJZQ1wa0
 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sas4D1uf24M
 

At http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYI4eqYE0QA
 is a video clip from
a new film commemorating the laterna in Turkey and featuring the new
laterna built by Panos Ioannidis.

At http://www.megarevma.net/laterna.htm is an interview with Niko
Temizis, a Greek born in Istanbul in 1902, who recalls Turconi's
workshop and mentions Armenian and Turkish music arrangers.

More about the laterna in Istanbul at
http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/Digests/200212/2002.12.23.01.html 

Robbie Rhodes, MMDigest