Photographic History Collection: Panorama Photographs and Cameras
date: label: Date made
content: 1848-2001
notes: label: Description
content: The Photographic History Collection (PHC) collection of panoramic objects is fairly extensive. The collection includes about sixty pieces of panoramic related equipment including cameras and specialized accessories such as film holders, printing frames, tripods, gear sets, lenses, and film about 150 panoramic photographs. It can be broken down into four main groups: 1) Patent and prototype panoramic cameras, 2) standard production panoramic cameras, 3) panoramic photographs, and 4) panoramic related material such as patents, letters, presentations, and books.
label: Description
content: 1) Patent and Prototype Cameras
label: Description
content: The NMAH collection includes a Daguerreotype patent model from 1848 and several F. W. Mueller prototype panoramic cameras that were never commercially manufactured. The F. W. Mueller collection includes three wooden prototypes plus supplemental lenses, a wooden tripod, two shutters, two circular film cutters and two printing frames complete with exposed circular negatives. Once in place, the prototype cameras could take circular 360º images of the surrounding landscape. Four other working Mueller barrel-type circular image cameras of wooden or aluminum construction are in the collection. These cameras could be attached to airplane wings and take 360º images of the earth below. These latter Mueller cameras were patented in Britain, France and the USA and military trials were carried out, but they were never commercially manufactured.
label: Description
content: 2) Panoramic Cameras
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content: Commercially manufactured production panoramic cameras are composed of three main groups, swinging lens cameras, rotating Cirkut type cameras and cameras with fixed wide angle lenses. The first two groups are strongly represented in the PHC collection.
label: Description
content: a) Kodak and Al-Vista cameras with a curved film plane and a lens that swings through an arc of 110º to 160º. The body and film of these cameras remains stationary during exposure while the lens and a slit behind it rotate together to expose the film. The two main manufacturers of commercial swinging lens panoramic cameras from the 1890's to the 1920's were Al-Vista cameras from the Multiscope & Film Co, and Panoram cameras made by Eastman Kodak. The NMAH collection has five Al-Vista and eight Panoram cameras.
label: Description
content: b) Cirkut cameras made by Folmer & Schwing Division, Eastman Kodak Co. These cameras use a gear mechanism to rotate the camera body around the optical center of the lens while pulling the film past a slit behind the lens, making a 360º panoramas possible. Cirkut cameras were made from the early 1900's and were popular with panoramic photographers, especially for photographing large groups of people. Although manufacturing ceased in the 1940's some remain in use today. The NMAH collection includes about eight Cirkut cameras and accessories including tripods, gears sets, platforms, roll holders, and film. Cirkut cameras come in two basic kit designs, those which can be used only as panoramic cameras and convertible models that can be used as conventional plate cameras or as Cirkut cameras with a special back. Both types of Cirkut camera are represented in the collection which includes Cirkut cameras for 8 inch, 10 inch, and 16inch wide film.
label: Description
content: b) Cirkut cameras made by Folmer & Schwing Division, Eastman Kodak Co. These cameras use a gear mechanism to rotate the camera body around the optical center of the lens while pulling the film past a slit behind the lens. Cirkut cameras were made from the early 1900's and were popular with panoramic photographers, especially for photographs of large groups of people. Although manufacturing ceased in the 1940's some remain in use today. The NMAH collection includes about eight Cirkut cameras and accessories including tripods, gears sets, platforms, roll holders, and film. Cirkut cameras come in two basic kit designs, those which can be used only as panoramic cameras and convertible models that can be used as conventional plate cameras or as Cirkut cameras with a special back. Both types of Cirkut camera are represented in the collection which includes Cirkut cameras for 8 inch, 10 inch, and 16inch wide film.
label: Description
content: 3) The collection of panoramic images
label: Description
content: There are about 150 photographs in the NMAH collection with an aspect ratio of 2:1 or greater. About two-thirds of the images are large in size, i.e., over a foot in height and often more than 3 to 5 feet in length. Most of the images were taken with panoramic cameras, especially Cirkut cameras, but some were taken using modern 35mm and 70mm panoramic cameras while others have been combined from two or more individual images. The great majority of the images are contact prints from the original negatives apart from a few enlarged from 35mm negatives. About half of the remaining smaller panoramic images are contact prints from 70mm film.
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content: Highlights of the NMAH panoramic image collection
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content: The earliest panorama is an image of San Francisco Harbor composed of five daguerreotypes taken in 1851.
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content: Friedrich von Martens was an early panorama photographer, and the collection includes eight panoramic photographs of Paris from the mid-1850's.
label: Description
content: 3) Panoramic Photographs
label: Description
content: There are approximately 150 photographs in the NMAH collection with an aspect ratio of 2:1 or greater. About two-thirds of the images are large in size, i.e., over a foot in height and often more than 3 to 5 feet in length. Most of the images were taken with panoramic cameras, especially Cirkut cameras, but some were taken using modern 35mm and 70mm panoramic cameras. Others have been combined from two or more individual images. Highlights of the NMAH panoramic image collection include:
label: Description
content: • The earliest panorama is an image of San Francisco Harbor composed of five daguerreotypes taken in 1851 by William Shew.
label: Description
content: • Eight panoramic photographs of Paris and the river Seine from the mid-1850's by Friedrich von Martens, an early panorama photographer.
label: Description
content: • Eighteen Mueller panoramic photographs, all but three of them taken in Baltimore, from the early 20th century. The Baltimore photographs include six taken soon after the major fire of 1904.
label: Description
content: • Two astronomical photographs. One is a time lapse panoramic image of the midnight sun in Alaska. Photographs were at twelve minute intervals over a 7 ½ hour period. The other image is the Southern Milky way made up from ten separate images with an exposure time of sixteen hours. Also in the collection is an infrared landscape taken from Lick observatory of the Sierra Mountains some 135 miles away.
label: Description
content: • The NMAH collection has about twenty-five photos of the Washington DC Mall and surrounding area dating from the 1870's. The earliest are two large panoramas by Francis Hacker from 1875 and the most recent are from 1970s with a cyclo-pan 70mm camera.
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content: • There are four panoramas of the buildings and student/staff body of the National Park Seminary for ladies taken in 1925 and 1926. The school's grounds later became part of Walter Reed Army Medical School.
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content: • Panoramas by noted photographers including Ann Noggle, Jack Rankin, and Jim Alinder.
label: Description
content: • The collection also has about 85 color and black and white panorama images on CD-ROM taken by Stephen Delroy at Ground Zero, New York, in September 2001.
label: Description
content: 4) Panoramic Reference Materials
label: Description
content: The NMAH collection includes reference materials related to the panoramic work of Mueller. The documents include British, French and US patent letters granted in 1917-18 and correspondence from 1912 to 1916 relating to F. W. Mueller's copywriting of his images. Also there is a set of correspondence from the US Navy relating to tests of Mueller's panoramic cameras.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Photography
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: COLL.PHOTOS.000004
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Panorama Photographs and Camera Collection