Robert B. MacKay
America by the Yard
Cirkut Camera: Images from the Early Twentieth Century
An astonishing collection of early panoramic photographs, many up to 5 feet wide.
This book is both a history of an unusual camera and a splendid display of its product. “Yard longs,” as the Cirkut camera’s huge panoramic photographs were called, caused a sensation after the camera’s introduction in the early twentieth century. Cirkut cameras were used to record scenic vistas, epic events, and group photographs of conventioneers, workers, soldiers, and students. Here, with many foldouts that show the prints in their full glory, are such historic moments as the building of the Panama Canal, the sunken battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the crash of the dirigible Shenandoah, the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 1908 Wellesley graduating class, and a very early race at the Indianapolis Speedway. More mundane subjects—a bathing beauty contest, locomotive factory workers—are equally fascinating in this format. Collectively these panoramas form a remarkable portrait of America at the turn of the last century
Robert B. MacKay is president of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities and the author of Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects. He lives in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
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