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Diagram showing the mechanism of a moving panorama, from Scientific American, 1848
The moving panorama was a popular form of visual entertainment in the nineteenth century. A relative more in concept than design to the Panoramic painting, it proved to be more durable than its fixed and immense cousin. Unlike 360 degree paintings that coralled their audiences into a constrained space, the moving panorama allowed a sense of limitless travel, and made the audience, rather than the image, seem to move. Such paintings were not panoramas in the truest sense, but rather contiguous views of passing scenery, as if seen from a boat or a train window. Installed on immense spools, they were scrolled past the audience behind a cut-out drop-scene or proscenium which hid the mechanism from public view. In contrast to fixed panoramas, the moving panorama almost always had a narrator, styled as its "Delineator" or "Professor", who described the scenes as they passed and added to the drama of the events depicted.
Popularity
At the peak of its success in the mid-nineteenth century, the moving panorama was quite possibly the most popular entertainment in the world, with hundreds of panoramas constantly touring major cities as well as the countryside, all around the world. The smaller panoramas could be hauled by horse and wagon, and the expansion of railway service in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States opened new markets to traveling panoramists. The larger firms, such as George K. Goodwin's of Boston, Massachusetts, managed many simultaneous shows, which travelled separately under subsidiary showman, while smaller firms managed only one panorama at a time. The trade was so extensive that both New York and Philadelphia had two firms each which specialized in painting panoramas to order. Careers could be made in the field by anyone who had a talent for dramatizing the moving scenery as it passed, and well-known public figures with a gift for stentorian speech -- among them actors, lawyers, and state legislators -- often spent some time in this employment.
