Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama

02/12/2022

For Lincoln's Birthday we added a new image to our stereocards page. This portrait was made six months after the Battle of Gettysburg. While one can get a sense of its depth in the animation, the portrait really comes alive when the anaglyph is viewed with red/cyan glasses.

The stereocard is titled, "American & Foreign Portrait Gallery." It features a seated Abraham Lincoln in an image known as O-84. Published by E. & H, T. Anthony & Co. The anaglyph and the animation were created from a scanned negative file at the National Archives.

11/18/2021

On November 19, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln came to Gettysburg for the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. While there are no photographs of him delivering his celebrated speech that day, there are a number of images in which he might be visible in the background. Here is one, restored from its degraded glass negative. Click below to see the 3D anaglyph and animation.

The glass negative (Library of Congress) from which this image, never published as a stereocard, was created is severely degraded, with sections of its emulsion missing. Furthermore, due to the long camera exposure time and the photographer's inability to control the movement of the crowd, some of t...

11/10/2021

On …we may recall the week in June of 1913, when more than 53,000 veterans from both sides of the Battle of Gettysburg returned to the battlefield for the Reunion of the Blue and Gray. Within the vast encampment (click the image to enter in virtual reality), events were held in a massive tent (scroll left), filled with 13,000 chairs, where President Woodrow Wilson came to address the old soldiers.

10/08/2021

Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama artist Paul Philippoteaux had an extensive career as an illustrator before he completed his first Gettysburg canvas in 1883. Click below to see 106 of his illustrations commissioned for the adventure novels of Jules Verne.

09/14/2021

On this page of our website:
https://battleofgettysburgcyclorama.com/battle-of-gettysburg/
We include a video with key scenes from the 1993 "Gettysburg" film, focusing upon its use of the Cyclorama painting for its main title sequence. While historians and others had very mixed reactions to the film, this account by one of the movie's "extras" is worth a read:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/10/my-experience-on-set-of-the-movie-gettysburg-1.html

Editor's note: As part of our Classic Film Festival featuring Civil War movies, you can see Gettysburg (1993) at the museum on Saturday, October 20, 2012. Inspired by the film festival, we’re taking you behind the scenes of Gettysburg with guest blogger Brian James Egen. He is the program developm...

08/25/2021

Visitors to the Gettysburg Cyclorama in the 1880s could purchase a program featuring a centerfold with a circular diagram of the complex painting. The visitor would rotate the diagram while traversing the rotunda to identify the events and persons depicted. We've created a digital version of this diagrammatic key, which you may drag to rotate. Click on the image below. After the page loads, double-click on the image. Then drag to rotate.

08/13/2021

Our animation of Gen. George Meade, which shows the evolution in media technologies since the Cyclorama, now features a haunting rendition of the Civil War tune "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground." Many thanks to Timothy Seaman, Phil Skeens, and Pine Wind Music.

The first cyclorama shown in America was The Siege of Paris, exhibited in Philadelphia in 1876, before moving to others cities nationwide. But, it was to be the Civil War which would come to inspire most of the cycloramas that were later created and exhibited in America; and, it was the astounding c...

08/04/2021

The most visually engaging feature of the Gettysburg Cyclorama project unfortunately remains out of reach for most of its intended audience. If you happen to have access to a head-mounted VR display however, you are in for a treat. The Cyclorama, experienced in such a device, seems astonishingly intimate, as if you are viewing the painting from within the canvas. Click on the image to learn more.

The conventional virtual tour presents the user-navigable VR space on the screen of a computer or hand-held device. The user sees this as a narrow segment of their visual environment, and must stare at the screen and interact with it by using a mouse, or by dragging on the screen with a finger.

07/30/2021

Igloo Vision, a maker of 360° VR workspaces, demonstrated how the Virtual Cyclorama could be used in a classroom environment.

A quick Google search of ‘how to engage students’ will no doubt lead to thousands upon thousands of results containing advice, suggestions and tips for...

07/27/2021

Take a virtual reality tour of the Cyclorama, the original venue for the painting now on display at . This is the sole surviving Gettysburg Cyclorama rotunda in the country.

On Saturday, October 20th, 1883 the managers of the Cyclorama held a private reception for journalists and prominent citizens of Chicago. The painting opened to its first paying customers two days later. A review in the Chicago Journal gushed that visitors “…were not only charmed but astonished ...