The Cirkut Camera

There are easier ways to make a panoramic photograph.

Today, a phone can sweep across a scene and assemble a panorama almost instantly. A digital camera can make a series of overlapping photographs that software stitches together with remarkable precision. In the early 20th century, the Cirkut camera presented another solution: rotate the entire camera while simultaneously moving a long roll of film through it.

A Cirkut doesn't simply take a very wide photograph. During an exposure, the entire camera slowly revolves on a geared tripod head while a spring-powered motor pulls film past a narrow vertical slit. The movement of the film and the rotation of the camera are synchronized. When everything works correctly, the camera essentially paints the scene across the film as light passes through the exposure slit.

The result can be a negative several feet long. With the right lens and enough film, a complete 360-degree photograph is possible.

More than 100 years after my own 1921 No. 10 Cirkut camera was built, I still use it to make photographs this way.

The origins of the Cirkut camera

The Cirkut emerged during an era of considerable experimentation with panoramic photography. Rotating panoramic cameras existed well before it, but the system that became the Cirkut was developed in the American West and refined into a commercial product in Rochester, New York.

William J. Johnston of Rock Springs, Wyoming, received a patent for a Cirkut-type panoramic camera on November 29, 1904. Johnston followed it in January 1905 with a patent for an improved revolving mechanism. David A. Reavill, also associated with Rock Springs and later Rochester, patented additional panoramic-camera mechanisms.

Johnston and Reavill assigned their designs to the Rochester Panoramic Camera Company, which had actually been incorporated in Wyoming in May 1904.

The camera that eventually went into commercial production, however, owed much to Rochester inventor Frederick Brehm. Brehm patented his panoramic-camera design in January 1905, and it became the basis of the first commercially manufactured No. 10 Cirkut.

The Rochester Panoramic Camera Company’s life was brief. In July 1905 its property and trademarks passed to the Century Camera Company of Rochester. Century was already controlled by Eastman Kodak, and in 1907 it became the Century Division of Eastman Kodak.

From there, the Cirkut passed through a succession of familiar names in American camera manufacturing: Century Camera, Eastman Kodak's Century and Folmer & Schwing operations, and eventually the independent Folmer Graflex Corporation.

The spelling “Cirkut” was intentional. David Reavill applied for the Cirkut trademark in 1905, and it was registered in 1906. Cirkut historian Bill McBride wrote that “Circuit” was already registered, leading the inventors to adopt the distinctive spelling that has identified the camera ever since.