A 1720s salon at candlelight. An ornate baroque cabinet with a long row of small ivory and ebony tongues rests on a parquet floor. From the cabinet's underside a lone white braided cable spirals out and disappears off-frame. Oil-painting illumination, deep shadow, low ISO speckle. Slow dolly in. Period drapery in the background, brass candelabra at the side.

1985 VHS news footage. Tracking lines, magnetic dropouts, low-resolution color smear. A violinist's bow-arm in a beige office is taped with copper electrode pads, fine wires wire to a beige plastic cabinet at the side of the desk. Date stamp in the corner. Slow camera zoom into the wires.

Daguerreotype, 1854. A tall iron cabinet stands in a salon, its entire front face a polished rectangle of deep black glass that reflects the studio drape behind. Silver tints, slight tarnish vignette, soft window source from the right. Long exposure ghosting on the glass surface.

Microsoft product catalog photograph, 1995. A beige plastic cabinet sits on a folded cyan satin sheet against a sky-blue gradient seamless. The cabinet has a long horizontal row of small white tongues exposed along its front edge. Cube-frame overhead halogens. Bright commercial catalog aesthetic. Sharp shadow under the cabinet.

1972 Polaroid SX-70 photograph. A small child is seated at a Victorian parlor cabinet, the cabinet's front open to reveal a long row of small ivory tongues on a wooden carriage. The child is shown only from behind. Soft blue cast, white border, square format, slight chemical drift at the edges.

Patent drawing, 1882, lithographed line art on aged cream paper. A cross-section view of a tall cabinet shows internal levers, slender hammers, and small ivory disks impacted from below by an unseen agent. Annotations in copperplate script. Slight foxing at the corners. Fold lines apparent across the paper.

1969 NASA mission documentation photograph. A long beige metal cabinet bristles with switches, dials, and small rectangular tongues mounted in a row, all on grey rolling castors. Fluorescent overhead source, slight green color shift. Wide static shot. Government stamp in the lower margin.

1991 art school portfolio photograph. An unattended carved wooden cabinet sits in a black-box gallery. Ornate floral inlays around the edges. The cabinet's front face is a flat black rectangle emitting cold cyan glow. Gallery illumination from above. Slight speckle, archival paper texture at the borders.

Hand-tinted lantern slide, 1908. A salon interior viewed in perspective. A long horizontal cabinet sits against the back wall, its surface inlaid with hundreds of small mother-of-pearl rectangles arranged in a row along its top edge. Soft sepia base, hand-applied color washes, slight scratch artifacts.

Cyanotype contact print, 1845. A lone long rectangular object is laid flat on the sensitized paper. The silhouette is filled with a regular pattern of smaller darker rectangles arranged in a chromatic row along its upper edge. Prussian blue frame, sharp white silhouettes, perfect contact registration.