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‘Panoramic whew’: The Aeroscope at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915

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.