In 1667 John Milton published “Paradise Lost,” a poem that in its over 10,000 lines included a number of words that Milton had coined just for the purpose. “Paradise Lost” was a runaway bestseller (or what passed for one in the late 1600s at least), and although Shakespeare gets more credit for expanding the language, Milton’s work actually added more to English.
One of the words Milton coined was “pandemonium.” What he meant by it was not quite the way it’s used today; in Paradise Lost “Pandemonium” was a city where all the demons live when they’re not at work, probably designing early version of tech support lines. Nowadays, of course, “pandemonium” has retained its figurative meaning of a noisy, confusing scene. It got this meaning because when people imagined a whole city populated by demons, they assumed it would be noisy, disorderly, and confusing. An alternative theory, though, is that it was more likely to have been very quiet, highly organized, and home to huge office buildings filled with cubicles. In any case, for centuries, educated people in English-speaking countries read (or swore to their teachers that of course they had read) “Paradise Lost,” including the part about Pandemonium.
Around the year 1800 or so the world seemed like it was about to change a lot; new technologies based on steam engines, mechanization, and accelerating developments in ship design, firearms, and metallurgy were driving people a bit nuts because they weren’t sure what would happen next. One thing that did happen next was that during that period people invented lots of new words. Not being as talented or creative as John Milton, many of these new words were based on words they already knew — such as “pandemonium.”
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher at the time who founded the idea of “utilitarianism.” Utilitarianism is based on the deceptively simple idea that the way you choose the best thing to do (as a person or as a society) is to analyze your choices and pick the one that delivers the most happiness to the greatest number of people. His ideas are still considered pretty progressive even today; he called for decriminalizing homosexuality, abolishing both the death penalty and physical punishment (even for unruly children), and even promoted animal rights. “Yes, yes”, you’re probably thinking, “Bentham was a fine fellow and all that, but why is he mentioned HERE?” It’s because one of the innovations he suggested was a new kind of prison where a small number of guards could oversee a lot of prisoners by being able to see them all at once. Remembering his Milton, he called his design the “Panopticon.”
Robert Barker was an English landscape painter. In the late 1700s he had the idea of creating a very, very wide painting in order to more accurately depict the whole landscape you see if you’re really there. By “very wide”, we’re talking about ten feet or more. Then he had the additional idea that if you’re observing a real landscape, it’s all around you — so he painted a picture that wrapped all the way around you in a circle, and even patented his technique. He set up a special display in London, sold tickets, and (also remembering his Milton) called it a “panorama.”
In 1830, a new building was erected in London (on Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square) designed to be an indoor market for various kinds of arts and crafts, such as furniture. It was the first version of one of those big warehouses you find today in cities where, even today, interior designers and their clients go to see and choose furnishings. Seth Smith was the builder, and (remembering his Milton) called the place the “Pantechnicon,” which was supposed to stand for “all arts and crafts.” The building burned down in 1874, but a related development lived on: if you were going to buy your furniture in a big indoor market, you needed a way to get that new sofa home. A new kind of wagon was invented; it had a big enclosed space and a ramp for loading and unloading. These wagons were called “pantechnicon vans.” In England (or at least in Australia), moving vans are still sometimes referred to as “pantecs.” In the early 1900s some of the wagons were designed so that the container box could be lifted right off the wheels, cargo intact, and loaded onto a train or ship. That was the first version of the now ubiquitous shipping container.
You can imagine the pandemonium that probably arose when two or three privileged Londoners wanted to buy the same sideboard at the pantechnicon. It would have made a great panorama, and when they inevitably came to blows, they might all have wound up in the Panopticon!
