09.0

//Source(s): Picture Perfect: The Art and Artifice of Public Image Making. by Kiku Adatto, Basic Books, 1993//
 * Dead medium: Daguerre's Diorama**
 * From: plichty@eznets.canton.oh.us Pat Lichty**

Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America (New York, Dover, 1976 (an excellent source for information on Daguerre). "...March 8, 1839. Louis Daguerre, a French painter and inventor, for some seventeen years had been the proprietor of one of the most popular spectacles in Paris. It was a theatre of illusions called the Diorama. "No actors performed in Daguerre's Diorama theatre. It consisted of a revolving floor that presented views of three stages. On each stage was an enormous canvas (72'x48') with scenes painted on both sides. Through the clever play of light, Daguerre could make one scene dissolve into another. Parisians were treated to the sight of an Alpine village before and after an avalanche, or Midnight Mass from inside and outside the cathedral, accompanied by candles and the smell of incense." (((This strikes me as a very early precursor to Heilig's Sensorama machine, due to the sensory augmentation of candles and incense. As a side note, as Daguerre went to meet with his colleague Samuel Morse to discuss his new device called the [|telegraph], the Diorama burnt to the ground. Pat Lichty)))