Panorama - diorama (set - painting)
type: Item
description: The cyclorama is sometimes so-called, though a panorama is really a set of scenes painted on a long stretch of canvas mounted on cylinders worked by hand from one side of the stage to the other.
historical term: Panorama
Field: stage mechanics and sets
Type of information: equipment
subclass of: set
First use date: 1800-01-01T00:00:00Z
context: Robert Barker of Edinburgh patented the panorama process on 19 June 1787 and opened the first panorama in London in 1792. Robert Fulton, the American inventor, obtained the patent to import the panorama to Paris at the end of 1799. Fulton opened the Paris panorama in 1800, but shortly thereafter ceded the patent to James Thayer. By the summer of 1800 there were two panorama rotundas in operation in a passage off the Boulevard Montmartre. At the end of 1802 a third rotunda was constructed in the Jardin des Capucines, Boulevard de la Chausée d'Antin.
context: theaters where they evolved into moving panoramas and became essential to theatrical set design. Moving panoramas were achieved by taking the long, continuous painted canvas scene and rolling each end around two large spool-type mechanisms that could be turned, causing the canvas to scroll across the back of a stage, often behind a stationary scenic piece or object like a boat, horse, or vehicle, to create the illusion of movement and travelling through space. The immense spools were scrolled past the audience behind a cut-out drop-scene or proscenium which hid the mechanism from public view.
inventor: Robert Fulton