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Martens, Friederich von
(b Venice, 1809; d Paris, 1875). French printmaker and photographer. Of German origin, he lived most of his life in Paris and exhibited prints of city scenes and seascapes at the Salon from 1834 to 1848. Among his views of cities were those of Coblenz, Cologne, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Le Havre, Mainz, Orléans, Paris, Rouen, Stuttgart, Trieste and Venice. In 1845 he invented the first panoramic camera, called the Megaskop-Kamera or Panorama-Kamera, which used curved daguerreotype plates and had a visual angle of 150°. The lens was rotated to scan the desired scene; a curved plate was essential to minimize aberration, but made development of the plates difficult. Nevertheless he managed to produce a number of high quality panoramas, such as Panoramic View of Paris from the Louvre (1847; Rochester, NY, Int. Mus. Phot.). He gave a detailed account of his invention to the Académie des Sciences in Paris in June 1845. In 1851 he exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London a number of albumen prints of architectural views, for which he was awarded the Council Medal. In the early 1850s he took a number of panoramic views of the Alps using talbotypes instead of daguerreotypes. One of these taken of Mont Blanc, in 14 parts, was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855.
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