Introduction to Panorama

The Panorama is a very important form of what Bill and I always called Precinema,  dating from the 1790s. A man called Robert Barker was sitting on top of Calton Hill in Edinburgh one day and, looking at the magnificent view, he thought: I wonder what it would be to try and capture this on canvas. So he painted sketches, and then, when he got back to his studio, transferred them onto vast canvases and a 180 degree view of Edinburgh was exhibited in a special building just off Princes street. And it was a huge success, so he decided to go one better. And he came down to London and found a site on the top of Albion Mills which was just south of Blackfriars Bridge. And here, he did a 360-degree view of London. And the six prints which you see in front of you were the souvenirs of that exhibition which you could bring away. So that was the first Panorama and indeed it was Barker who invented the word panorama which we use in all sorts of contexts today including on television.