The apparatus is secured in the center of the panorama or cyclorama building by a steel tube and guys of steel wire. The operator stands in the center, upon a circular platform, and is surrounded by an annular table supporting eight carriages, upon which are mounted the lanterns, cinematographs, kinetoscopes, and all arrangements required for imparting life to the scene and producing the transformation. Each lantern is provided with an arc light, and the wires to furnish the current pass through the suspension tube. The annular table carries the rheostats by which the light is regulated, according to the effects to be produced with iris diaphragms, which permit of obtaining vanishing effects and night, sunrise, or sunset effects. The projecting lanterns, eight in number, are double, one being ranged over the other, thus permitting of the preparation of a view, and focusing it, while the spectators are looking at another. The change of pictures is not effected until everything is in order. The carriages which support the lanterns permit of accurately adjusting views so that the registry is perfect. The eight positive slides produce a panorama three hundred feet in circumference and over thirty feet high. The rays which emanate from each of the projecting lanterns are such that they would overlap did not a frame fixed to the lenses, and carefully regulated, suppress those parts of the views which would encroach upon one another. When the lanterns are properly arranged it is possible to project moving pictures upon any part of the canvas screen.
CHAPTER VIII.
FIREWORKS WITH DRAMATIC ACCESSORIES.
SCENES READY FOR LOWERING.
The love of show and the spectacular is inherent in human nature. Games and entertainments on a colossal scale have always appealed to the popular taste. An important factor in such spectacles is the display of fireworks, in the love for which the Americans can sympathize with the Orientals. As far back as 1879, Mr. James Pain of London gave spectacular productions at Manhattan Beach, one of New York’s most popular resorts, and since that time their popularity has been increased, so that now entertainments of this class are given in comparatively small cities. It is perhaps more proper to speak of these entertainments as fireworks with dramatic accessories than to call them dramas with fireworks, for the raison d’être of the entire performance depends not upon the loosely hung together plot, but on the gigantic display of fireworks, which is accompanied by enough of realistic stage setting and dramatic performance to give a good excuse for the performance. Strange as it may seem, these mammoth plays, as regards the scenery, are as interchangeable as those in any theater, the grounds in which the scenery is installed being of the same general dimensions in all cases. This, of course, greatly simplifies a change of performance. The company which has been prominently identified with these spectacles sometimes has as many as seven in use at one time. They move about from place to place, so that in the course of a season thirty or forty cities are visited, the stay varying from a week to a whole season. The performance is held in the open air, at either some popular resort or in some place where the grounds are readily accessible.
