The mechanical postcard had its greatest success in the first decade of the twentieth century. It... more The mechanical postcard had its greatest success in the first decade of the twentieth century. Its unique feature was that the images on a mechanical postcard moved; they did so by employing a variety of techniques, including pull-tabs, accordion fold-outs, rotating volvelles, lenticular printing, and more. The most frequent thematic inspiration for this movement was transit: the cards pictured automobiles and airplanes, showing the new world of motordom and aeriality.I propose that mechanical postcards adopted and repurposed expressly cinematic and animatic techniques in order to relay messages that self-reflexively concerned their means of delivery. That is to say that mechanical postcards mediated their provenance and their transit—their route from sender to receiver by car, bus, train, or airplane—in a way that defined the format. As a cultural residue of the growing mobility of the populace, these postcards delivered transportation in the guise of communication.
The nineteenth-century ‘panstereorama’ was an urban relief model placed on display as a public sp... more The nineteenth-century ‘panstereorama’ was an urban relief model placed on display as a public spectacle. In this article, I consider first two affiliated forms that help to explain the genre, namely panorama paintings and plans-reliefs. I then go on to consider urban regional practices of city modelling in London and Paris before examining in detail panstereoramas representing Paris and New York. It is argued that this form of model urban cartography served as proxy for the view obtained from the increasingly popular balloon trip and that it accordingly provided virtual travel to, and a map of, the cities depicted.
Amid the many forms of aerial display presented during San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific Internation... more Amid the many forms of aerial display presented during San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 – barnstorming demonstrations, giant relief maps, printed bird’s eye guides, and many others – one stood above the others in prestige and demand. Designed by the future engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, Joseph Strauss, the ‘Aeroscope’ was a curious machine, occupying a position somewhere between a tethered balloon, a movie theater, and an industrial crane. The Aeroscope offered fairgoers an aerial panorama of the exposition grounds, and functions as an axial point with which to survey the debate over the place of aerial vision. Although the objectives and effects of this device were, to its ultimate detriment, diverse, what was most widely commented upon was its unique helical arc, which perpetually shifted the rider’s perspective and distance from the subjects of the view, and further toyed with any appreciable scale markers. The Aeroscope, arguably a centering monument of the exhibition, promised cartographic information, but delivered instead an interpretive dizziness.
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