In my few sorties in the 'way back machine' looking into the roots of what it is we've ended up with in photography, one of the things that struck me was just how many weird and wonderful formats (i.e. aspect ratios) there were out there in the early days. As a result there were quite a few pano-aspect cameras on the market even way, way back. One thing I read which I liked a lot was that pano cams were sometimes referred to as 'banquet cameras' because they were often used to take group photos at large social gatherings....like banquets.