Atlas Trail
From Camera Obscura to Streaming
Two centuries of learning to see at a distance, in eight stops: a darkened room older than science, the first image light ever fixed, the cafe where projected pictures got an audience, and the upload that put a camera in every hand.
Stop 1 of 8.
Technologies
Antiquity onward. Light through a pinhole paints the world upside down on a wall; the dark chamber that becomes the camera.
Stop 2 of 8.
Milestones
Circa 1826. Niepce fixes the view from his window on a pewter plate; the first time light writes a permanent picture.
Stop 3 of 8.
Milestones
28 December 1895. In a Paris cafe basement, pictures move on a screen for a paying audience; cinema begins as a shared room.
Stop 4 of 8.
Landmark Works
1927. The pictures learn to talk, and the silent film, thirty years of a whole art, ends within three.
Stop 5 of 8.
Milestones
26 January 1926. In a Soho attic, a spinning disc puts a live moving face on a screen across the room; television is real.
Stop 6 of 8.
Landmark Works
30 October 1938. Welles reads a Martian invasion as breaking news, and the age of broadcast trust meets its first great lesson.
Stop 7 of 8.
Milestones
20 July 1969. Some 600 million people watch the same footsteps at the same time; broadcasting at planetary scale.
Stop 8 of 8.
Milestones
2005. A nineteen-second clip at the zoo opens the era in which the audience is also the broadcaster.
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