A closer look
Imagine if your VR headset weighed a ton and required you to sit in a circle with 24 strangers staring into wooden eyeholes. That was the Kaiser Panorama, a wildly popular proto-immersive media machine from the late 1800s. Invented in Germany, this massive cylindrical wooden contraption rotated illuminated 3D stereoscopic glass slides in front of viewers. You’d sit in your designated seat, peer through the lenses, and collectively gasp at static, tinted images of exotic places like the Egyptian pyramids or the Swiss Alps. It was essentially the world’s most uncomfortable, slow-moving group slide presentation.
