Editing Panorama (section)

== History ==
[[File:Vue circulaire des montagnes qu ‘on decouvre du sommet du Glacier de Buet, from Horace-Benedict de Saussure, Voyage dans les Alpes, précédés d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Geneve. Neuchatel, l779-96, pl. 8.jpg|thumb|"Vue circulaire des montagnes qu'on decouvre du sommet du Glacier de Buet", from Horace-Benedict de Saussure, ''Voyage dans les Alpes, précédés d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Geneve''. Neuchatel, 1779–96, pl. 8.]]

The device of the panorama existed in painting, particularly in [[mural]]s, as early as 20 A.D., in those found in [[Pompeii]],<ref>{{Citation | author1=Grau, Oliver | author2=Custance, Gloria | title=Virtual art: from illusion to immersion | year=2003 | publication-date=2003 | publisher=MIT Press | edition=Rev. and expanded | isbn=978-0-262-07241-0 }}</ref> as a means of generating an immersive "[[Panopticism|panoptic]]" experience of a [[:wikt:vista|vista]].

[[Cartography|Cartographic]] experiments during the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] era preceded European [[Panoramic painting|panorama painting]] and contributed<ref>as argued in Oettermann, Stephan, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium. trans.  Deborah Lucas Schneider (New York: Zone Books, 1997)</ref> to a formative impulse toward panoramic vision and depiction.

This novel perspective was quickly conveyed to America by [[Benjamin Franklin]] who was present for the first manned balloon flight by the [[Montgolfier brothers]] in 1783, and by the American-born physician, [[John Jeffries]] who had joined French aeronaut [[Jean-Pierre Blanchard|Jean Pierre Blanchard]] on flights over [[England]] and the first aerial crossing of the [[English Channel]] in 1785.<ref>John Jeffries. ''Two Voyages of Dr Jeffries with Mons''. Blanchard (London. 1786: reprint, New York: Aeronautical Archive of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences and the Works Projects Administration. 1941), 17, 20.</ref>