By the 1880s, at last the 19th century fascination with phrenology, physiognomies and typologies of the human face found a outlet. In this system, dubbed Bertillonage after its inventor, we have a true anthropometrical approach, with the frontal and profile portraits (later called ‘mug shots’), being just one part of a complete system of photo-identity.

Raoul Grimoin-Sanson’s Cinéorama at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair was the first cinematic panorama, opened scarcely five years after cinema came into being. An early step in immersive experience and simulation, Gromoin~Sansion’s feature for Paris World Exposition of 1900, was a simulated balloon ascent over Paris. With this user-illusion in mind, the audience were seated in a vast gondola, while the illusion of aerial ascent was provided by 10 synchronised 70mm projectors, mounted under the gondal and projecting their images, taken from a real balloon ascending 400 metres over the Tuileries Gardens, onto a panoramic circular screen.

This Austrian invention kick-started a wave of innovation in cameras designed to rotate through 180 degrees while the shutter was open. The great grandfather of the motion control camera, the Quicktime VR stepped camera mount, this camera was superseded by a smooth-panning camera by Friedrich von Martens. After the invention of Wet-Plate Collodion process (Frederick Scott Archer 1851), ordinary cameras could be positioned manually and several prints made, to be mounted together into a panorama.

The photograph is a combination print, assembled from 30 individual negatives printed onto one large piece of paper. First exhibited at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, the image proved controversial for its depiction of nude men and women in the same image. Queen Victoria, however, bought a copy for Prince Albert.

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This is an attempt at creating a chronofile (Buckminster Fuller’s word for a timeline-cum-archive) that is also a concept map (Joseph Novak’s term for a graphical tool for the representation of knowledge) linking important developments together into a narrative tracing the evolution of 21st century media.