On our 2007 series of  Archival Panoramic  Prints:   

As a result of hundreds of hours of professional restoration, we are able to offer antique images as no one has ever seen them.
These old photographs have been cleaned-up and enlarged to show detail -- historical views presented as never before!
These beautiful prints, fascinating and entertaining, and sure conversation pieces when framed. 
Printed with the finest archival inks on heavy acid-free photo paper, ready to frame!  We hope that you and your family will enjoy these prints for generations.
 

Very impressive framed to display in any business, school, or home.  Hang one of these amazing photographs in your office, restaurant, bar or saloon, doctor's or dentist's office, waiting room, law office, hair salon, barber shop, classroom, antique store, house or vacation home --  anywhere you want a fun and fascinating vintage image!

You've really got to see these huge panoramic photographs to appreciate them,
so buy one and we'll gladly refund your purchase price if  you don't love it!

About the above print:
"1910 Airplane Race"
1st National Aviation Meet, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, June 13-18, 1910

This photograph is printed on heavy photo paper, 38 inches long by 13 inches wide.
Image is approximately 36 inches long by 9 ¾ inches wide.

It can be framed as is or trimmed to several frame sizes. Some of our customers like to frame these as wide as the paper. Some like to trim them for longer, narrower frames.  We can even trim these for you if you prefer!

Detail from "1910 Airplane Race" panorama

Detail from "1910 Airplane Race" panorama

Here's an example of how these panoramics can look framed. The image size in this picture is 36" x 9" and the paper was trimmed down to leave only a narrow border. You may choose to leave a wider border, or to matte your print.

Frame not included
 

Although these images have been extensively restored, please keep in mind that they are from 100-year-old negatives. The originals were often cracked, stained, scratched or damaged in other ways. All had division marks where the several plates making up these photographs were placed side-by-side to create the panoramic effect. We have spent many, many hours restoring these to get them to their current state.  These photographs are glimpses into history; they will not always look like recently taken modern photographs. To the best of our knowledge no one has ever seen better quality prints of these photographs. They simply do not exist.

History of Panoramic Photographs

Shortly after the invention of photography in 1839, the desire to show overviews of cities and landscapes prompted photographers to create panoramas. Early panoramas were made by placing two to a dozen daguerreotype plates side-by-side to form a panoramic image. Daguerreotypes, the first commercially available photographic process, used silver- coated copper plates to produce highly detailed images.

Some of the earliest vintage panoramics were taken and assembled this way by George Barnard, a photographer for the Union Army in the American Civil War in the 1860s. His work, revolutionary at the time, provided vast overviews of fortifications and terrain. Military engineers and generals greatly valued these panoramic overviews.

Barnard's panoramas were printed from two or more wet-plate glass negatives that were exposed in a conventional camera. The "wet-plates" had to be coated with an emulsion, sensitized, exposed, and developed in the field while the plates were still wet. After each exposure, the camera was rotated to the next section of the panorama to make a new negative. Upon return to the studio, a print was made from each negative by placing a sensitized sheet of photographic paper on the emulsion side of the negative in a printing frame. The frame was placed in the sun until the prints achieved the desired density. The prints were then fixed, washed, trimmed, arranged, and mounted to form a panoramic photograph.

The separately mounted prints, made from the four plates, are visible in the finished panorama. The perspective is similar to that of another popular bird's-eye view technique known as panoramic maps.

In the late nineteenth century, cameras were manufactured specifically for producing panoramas. These cameras were either swing-lens cameras, where the lens rotated while the film remained stationary, or 360-degree rotation cameras, where both the camera and the film rotated.

Following the invention of flexible film in 1887 panoramic photography was revolutionized. The invention, initially created by Hannibal Goodwin and later copied and marketed by the Eastman Kodak Company, was a milestone in photography and greatly benefited panoramic photography in particular, spawning a wave of cameras utilizing this new, convenient, and practical method. Soon after, dozens of cameras came on the market.

The Cirkut camera was patented in 1904. It used large format film, ranging in width from 5" to 16" and was capable of producing a 360-degree photograph measuring up to 20 feet long. Both the camera and the film rotated on a special tripod during the exposure.

Source: Wikipedia