Arthur Clarence Pillsbury was born Oct. 9, 1870 in Medford, Massachusetts, son of Harlin H. and Harriet Foster Pillsbury. He graduated from Stanford University in 1897 with a degree in mechanical engineering and came to Alaska in 1898 to work the gold camps in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. He had headquarters in Wrangell, Juneau, Sitka and Skagway. He returned to Seattle and ran the Pillsbury Panoramic View Co, then went back to California and in 1903 worked as photographer for the San Francisco Examiner.

He married Sara Aetheline Banfield in 1906 in San Francisco and they adopted 3 children. He started the Pillsbury Picture Co. in Oakland and operated a studio in Yosemite Valley from 1907-1927. In the course of his career, Arthur Pillsbury "...built the first panorama camera, taking it to the Yukon to record the gold towns from the headwaters of the Yukon River to the ocean. ...chronicled the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire...[and] photograph[ed] its rebuilding from a balloon anchored on a tug in the bay. In 1914 he would build the first microscopic motions picture camera. In 1917 he would build the first X-ray motion picture camera. These would be followed by the first underwater motion picture camera in 1930. He would take that camera to Pago-Pago and himself film the first underwater movie." Arthur C. Pillsbury died in Oakland, California March 5, 1946. [From: the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation web site. Accessed 26 December 2002: http://www.acpillsburyfoundation.com/index.html]. updated web site address 12/6/2010 : http://www.acpillsburyfoundation.org/