The Panopticon is a unique kind of prison building designed by the eighteenth century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham spent most of his later years and a great deal of his own money to promote the construction of the prison, but it was never actually built. "Panopticon" is an invented word based on the fact that the guards concealed in Bentham's central tower can observe (-opticon) all (pan-) without the prisoners' consent or knowledge. The Panopticon has an ingenious, but relatively simple design. The prisoners live in single cells built into the wall of a ring-shaped "outer" tower. Each cell has one barred window on the outside wall and another window set in the top half of the cell door. The prisoners are always backlit and easily observed. A smaller "watchtower" is placed at the center of the open ring. The tower has different levels accessible by stairs or ladders.

Bentham covered the observation window of the watchtower with a system of slats and Venetian blinds so that the prisoners would never know when the guards were watching them. Since the prisoners can't see the guards, they must assume that they were being watched all the time. According to Bentham one guard in the Panopticon was as effective as twenty guards in an ordinary prison. In his proposal to the Royal Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, he suggested that the prisoner be kept busy walking on wheels to power textile looms. 

As computers and surveillance technology began more sophisticated in the second half of the twentieth century, the design of the Panopticon became a theoretical justification for the Tabula’s activities. (see Panopticon as model for social control).