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In 1825 Joshuah Purdy Brown was the first circus owner to use a large canvas tent for the circus performance. The original American circuses were primarily travelling menageries. The American circus was revolutionized by P. T. Barnum and William Cameron Coup, who launched P. T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie & Circus, a travelling combination animal and human oddities, the exhibition of humans as a freakshow or sideshow was thus an American invention. Coup was also the first circus entrepreneur to use circus trains to transport the circus from town to town; a practice that continues today and introduced the first multiple ringed circuses.
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