Of the Eidophusikon, and other simulacra

The original Eidophusikon

When it comes to Victorian virtual reality, the Panorama by no means had a monopoly on the concept. For centuries, there lived the dream that one could, by means of some mechanical apparatus or another, perfectly simulate the motion and appearance of life and the world around us. The eighteenth century was fixated on automata, ranging from mechanical musicians to a remarkable "digesting duck" which not only ate food, but excreted it out its other end! As the nineteenth century dawned, the scope of such simulacra both expanded and contracted -- expanding into the world of landscapes and natural phenomena, and yet shrinking in scale such that individual people, in some instances, were no larger than ants.

First and foremost among these new wonders was the Eidophusikon -- invented by the actor David Garrick and the artist Philip James de Loutherbourg. Miniature theatres were already known, and would have been familiar to Garrick; what this new spectacle added was a realistic set of changes, whether of light, clouds, or weather; within its confines, the sun rose and set, the moon appeared behind clouds, storms blew across tiny harbors, and volcanoes erupted with fire and smoke. Its exact mechanism is no longer known, but it has been reconstructed to a greater or lesser degree several times. The first, in 2004, made use of a full-sized theatre, and thus was really only a tribute of sorts; the second time, at the Yale Center for British Art in 2005, was the first done to scale. Since then, a third version has been built, and is now a permanent part of the New National Museum in Monaco. Yet another has recently been tried, using 3D computer modeling, in Sydney, Australia -- this video illustrates some of the challenges involved, and re-creates one of the original scenes with remarable exactitude.

The Eidophusikon debuted in 1781, and despite one brief revival, survived only as a sort of rumor. Nevertheless, it inspired a wide variety of Victorian exhibitions, most prominently an apparatus known as a "Theatre of Arts." Its inventor, one J.F. Thiodon, had hit upon the expedient of using leather belts that were in constant motion; when a belt was raised into position below the stage, mechanical figures -- men, horses, ships, and so forth -- were "actuated," the friction with the belt causing them to move about. Thus, while the individual figures might not be thought "realistic," their collective motion -- armies marching in file, horses galloping along a road, trees shaking in the wind -- gave such a lifelike appearance that audiences were mechanically swept off their feet. No less a showman than P.T. Barnum aquired one of these theatres, and displayed it to great effect at his American Museum in New York. They were not only captivating, but versatile -- Barnum's "Siege of Sebastopol" (1854) could readily, by re-painting its soldiers, be made to serve as the "Attack on Fort Sumter" (1861) -- indeed, this was just what was done (the change was made right here in Providence, by a company that specialized in re-purposing panoramas and mechanical amusements).  This, after all, was an age of economy; the labor represented by the mechanical apparatus was, like a panorama's canvas, more valuable than the paint which represented its subject. There was no need, within these "theatres," to aspire to the status of fine art; they comfortably rested between entertainment and education, and proved enormously durable.

Similar mechanical theatres of this sort far outlived Mr. Thiodon, and appeared around the world; one of them, the "Grand Théâtre Méchanique" of Moreiux survives to this day; here you can see the figures in detail, with animated GIFS showing them in motion. With the mechanism hidden just below the bottom edge of the stage, it's no wonder that audiences gasped in wonder, as General Menshikov -- or was that Major Anderson? -- bravely tried to hold on despite heavy losses among their mechanized followers.

As Altick notes, these shows were coeval with lantern and panorama entertainments, and quite often a single exhibition would combine elements of all of them. There was the additional element of what was then called "The Chinese Shades," but we would see as a "shadow play" -- the Australian artist Richard Bradshaw still plies the same trade today. So many were the various apparati of the time, and so ambiguous the words on the handbills, that Erkki Huktamo (author of Illusions in Motion) often notes that it's probaby impossible to know exactly what some of them consisted of. All we can be sure of, is that the audiences came expecting a spectacle of some sort, and seem to have gone home happy.