A brief history of stereographs and stereoscopes  (Page 2/2)

Stereographs came in a variety of formats that reflected the era and region in which they were produced. At firststereotypes were produced as daguerrotypes (printed on copper) and ambrotypes (printed on glass), but stereographs became much morecommon once they began to be printed on card stock, which was less expensive and more stable. Paper stereographs mounted on flat cardswere generally produced between 1857 and 1890, while those mounted on a “warped” gray card were generally produced between 1892 and1940 (Darrah, 10-11). Early stereographs measured approximately 3 1/2 x 7 inches, but during the 1870s larger sizes emerged,including the 4 x 7 inch “cabinet,” the 4 ½ x 7 inch “deluxe,” and the 5 x 7 inch “imperial” cards. By the late 1850s, the standardthickness of cards was .04 inches. Curved mounts became prominent in the 1880s, after B. W. Killburn found that a mount with a slightcurvature could increase the illusion of depth.

Initially photographers created stereographs by taking one photograph, then slightly shifting the camera to anew position. Cameras with multiple lenses were eventually used, although some photographers employed a rig with two cameras. (Formore on stereograph cameras, see (External Link) ). Photographing for stereoscopes required the photographer to position the cameracarefully to get the best vantage point.

Between the 1840s and the 1920s, stereographs served as an important method of entertainment, education, andvirtual travel—predecessors to contemporary forms of media such as television and movies. As Burke Long argues, “Mass-produced andrelatively cheap, the integrated system of mechanical viewer and photographs became fashionable for classroom pedagogy, touristmementos, and parlor travel to exotic places of the world” (90). People viewed stereographs at homes, schools, and churches, gazing at images documenting almost every subject imaginable fromastronomy to zoology. According to stereograph collector and historian William Darrah, stereographs were used to teach millionsof American children about geography, natural history, and a range of other subejcts (50). Many in the nineteenth century embracedphotography as a medium that, unlike other arts such as painting, presented the “truth” through exact rendering of a scene.Stereographs seemed even more real and more engaging by simulating three dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes called stereographs “sunsculptures” and commented, “All pictures in which perspective and light and shade are properly managed, have more or less the effectof solidity; but by this instrument that effect is so heightened as to produce an appearance of reality which cheats the senses withits seeming truth” (16).

By the 1920s, movies and printed half-tone images supplanted stereographs as the leading photographic medium.However, 3-D imaging experienced a resurgence in the 1950s, when the ViewMaster, a stereoscopic device which used a round disc thatdisplayed seven images, was popularized. Initially the ViewMaster was sold as a tourist souvenir, but eventually it became more of achildren’s toy—indeed, it was named one of the top 50 toys of the twentieth century. A few contemporary artists use stereography asan expressive medium, while people now don stereoscopic glasses (and data gloves) to explore computer-generated 3D virtual realityenvironments.

References

Darrah, William. The World of Stereographs. Gettysburg, PA: Darrah, 1977.

Hoelscher, Steven. “The Photographic Construction of Tourist Space in Victorian America.” Geographical Review. 88.4 (1998): 548-570. JSTOR.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The Stereoscope and Stereoscopic Photographs. New York and London: Underwood&Underwood, 1906.

Long, Burke O. Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.