observed the scenes from a platform in the center of the rotunda. In 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first brick panorama rotunda building in the world, in Leicester Square, and made a fortune. Viewers flocked to pay a stiff 3 shillings to stand on a central platform under a skylight, which offered an even lighting, and get an experience that was "panoramic" (an adjective that didn't appear in print until 1813). The extended meaning of a "comprehensive survey" of a subject followed sooner, in 1801. Visitors to Barker's Panorama of London, painted as if viewed from the roof of Albion Mills on the South Bank, could purchase a series of six prints that modestly recalled the experience; end-to-end the prints stretched 3.25 metres. In contrast, the actual panorama spanned 250 square metres. The main goal of the panorama was to immerse the audience to the point where they could not tell the difference between the canvas and reality, in other words, wholeness. To accomplish this, all borders of the canvas had to be concealed. Props were also strategically positioned in the foreground of the scene to increase realism. Two windows laid into the roof allowed natural light to flood the canvases, also making the illusion more realistic. Two scenes could be exhibited at the rotunda in Leicester Square simultaneously, however the rotunda at Leicester Square was the only rotunda to house two panoramas. Houses with single scenes proved more popular. While at Leicester Square, the audience was herded down a long, dark corridor to clear their minds. The idea was to have spectators more or less forget what they just saw, leaving their minds blank to view the second scene. Despite the audience's "mind blanking" walk in the dark, panoramas were designed to have a lingering effect upon the viewer. For some, this attribute placed panoramas in the same category as propaganda of the period: no more than an illusion meant to deceive. Barker's accomplishment involved sophisticated manipulations of perspective not encountered in the panorama's predecessors, the wide-angle "prospect" of a city familiar since the 16th century, or Wenceslas Hollar's Long View of London from Bankside, etched on several contiguous sheets. When Barker first patented his technique in 1787, he had given it a French title: La Nature à Coup d' Oeil ("Nature at a glance"). A sensibility to the "picturesque" was developing among the educated class, and