Stereoscopes

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Stereoscopes

Stereoscopy—creating three-dimensional visual experiences from two-dimensional materials—informed most every visual medium of the Modern age: art, photography, cinema, television, and newspapers. In the nineteenth century the marriage of stereoscopy, photography, and industrial production resulted in the first photographic mass media: the Victorian stereoscope. Popular from 1850-1920, the stereoscope answered desires for greater realism in visual representation while its popular, yet intimate, visual experience prefigured visual media like cinema and television. Eventually overshadowed by cinema and later electronic visual technologies, the optical principles of the stereoscope grounded many popular visual entertainments of the twentieth century: View-Master viewers, 3-D cinema and comic books, and Magic Eye stereograms.

The Victorian stereoscope was part of a general trend in the nineteenth century towards more realistic visual representations, mass-produced for an emergent commodity culture. It has been long known that two-dimensional representations, like drawing and painting, are a poor imitation of human visual experiences. Paintings present but a single image, while in normal binocular vision the two different images received by each eye are synthesized by the brain into a single image, allowing us to perceive depth and spatial relationships. In 1832 British physicist Charles Wheatstone invented a device—the reflecting stereoscope—which induced normal binocular vision using prepared imagery. Wheatstone created two drawings of an object which mimicked the slightly different perspective our two eyes have of a single scene. By using mirrors the reflecting stereoscope channelled vision so that only one of the drawings could be seen by each eye. The viewer's brain combined the two images into a single stereoscopic image with qualities similar to that of unaided vision. It was soon discovered that stereo-photographs could be prepared for Wheatstone's device by simultaneously taking two photographs with a double-lensed camera. If the imagery was properly prepared, the visual effects of solidity, depth, and realism were unparalleled.

Wheatstone's awkward device was merely a scientific curiosity until modified by William Brewster in 1849. Brewster's lenticular stereoscope, a small box outfitted with lenses and a slot to hold stereographic imagery, debuted in 1851 at London's Great International Exhibition. Although the interest of Queen Victoria ensured immediate popularity, early photographic technologies hampered broad circulation. In the 1840s Wheatstone's device used daguerreotypes and calotypes, but only after the 1851 introduction of glass-plate negatives could stereo-photographs be mass-produced. With cheap viewers and abundant imagery, stereoscopic viewing came within reach of a broad middle-class audience, fulfilling the London Stereoscopic Company's motto "A Stereoscope In Every Home."

Popularity depended on a plentiful supply of imagery in the form of stereographs, also called stereocards or stereoviews. Generally, stereographs are four-by-seven inch rectangular cards having two stereo-photographs pasted side-by-side. The photographer's, or more commonly publisher's, imprint and a short caption might be shown on the front, with a longer text on the reverse. Later thematic boxed sets were accompanied by maps and an explanatory guidebook. Since the overall size and shape of the stereograph was dictated by the stereoscope (similar to later standardized mass media like cassette tapes or CDs) stereographic publishers anticipated consumer desire and sought market niches through aesthetic innovation. Collectors attest to the bewildering diversity of stereographs: examples are known with tintype, daguerreotype, ambrotype, and lithographic images; pasted on paper, cardstock, glass, and porcelain mounts. Usually a stereograph can be dated to within a few years based solely on physical details.

Initially, stereographs were produced by lone figures who often took the photograph, processed the film, assembled the stereograph and sold it to tourists. Stereo-photographers included the obscure and the famous; William Henry Jackson, Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, Eadweard Muybridge, and Matthew Brady are better known producers. Historian William Culp Darrah estimated that between 1860 and 1890 as many as 12,000 stereo-photographers took between 3.5 and 4.5 million individual images, which were printed on upwards of 400 million stereographs. In the later nineteenth century large factories churned out thousands of stereographs a day using assembly-line methods. Stereographs were sold at tourist spots, from storefronts, through mail order catalogues, and door to door. Production gradually consolidated until, in 1921, the Keystone View Company was the sole purveyor of stereographs in America.

If the invention and early developments of stereoscopy belong to Europeans, the phenomenon attained its greatest success in America. Stereoscopes were known in America from the early 1850s. In 1854 the Langenheim Brothers of Philadelphia became the first large-scale retailers of stereoscopic equipment. Between 1859-63 noted essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes promoted the stereoscope in three enthusiastic articles in The Atlantic Monthly. Holmes also designed a simple hand-held wooden stereoscope, improved and marketed by Boston photographer J.L. Bates. Stereo-photography was central to convincing skeptical Eastern audiences of the wonders of the American West, as well as conveying in realistic detail the horrors of the Civil and Spanish-American Wars.

By delivering news of the world in visual form, stereographs were roughly analogous to cinematic newsreels and television. Stereographs were a way to travel the world and experience its events from the security of one's armchair. Subjects included cities, famous places, tourist destinations, and resorts, portraits of famous people, fine art works, modes of transportation, international expositions, wars, natural disasters, aftermaths of fires and earthquakes, erotica and pornography, educational and scientific matter. One card showed the full moon, which when viewed through a stereoscope showed every crater and mountain with a degree of detailed relief unattainable even using a telescope. Similar to early narrative silent film, a short series of stereographs could present a comedy or morality play. Subject matter accommodated and anticipated the taste of the white Euro-American middle class, its primary consumer. Racial and social stereotyping was prevalent especially in images of Native and African Americans, urban immigrants, and colonized peoples in Africa and Asia. Collecting, trading, organizing, viewing, and sharing stereocards was a prominent family pastime. Home filing cabinets for stereographs allowed collectors to construct a personal visual cartography of the world, infinite in its variety, endlessly malleable in form.

With the emergence of cinema, and especially after the 1920s, the stereoscope became largely an educational tool and later a children's toy. Tru-Vue stereoscopic filmstrips (1920s-1950s) and the better-known View-Master system introduced at the 1939 New York World's Fair employed a similar optical apparatus. View-Master reels held ten translucent celluloid stereoscopic images on a thin plastic disk which was inserted into a lightweight View-Master viewer. Translucent celluloid imitated the luminescence of cinematic projections, injecting new life into an old gadget. View-Master contracted with Walt Disney studios to publish its popular animated films as View-Master reels suggesting a growing audience among children. In the 1980s View-Master viewers appeared in the shape of popular children's animated characters like Mickey Mouse, Casper the Ghost, Big Bird, Batman and Tweety Bird.

Three-dimensional cinema of the early 1950s briefly revived adult interest in three-dimensional viewing. Broadcast television reduced theater attendance and to attract viewers Hollywood introduced Natural Vision, or 3-D movies. Between 1952-54 Hollywood produced over 70 3-D movies beginning with Bwana Devil (Arch Oboler, 1952), the most famous being Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder (1954). To see a movie in 3-D, moviegoers wore special throwaway glasses with one red and one blue lens which permitted each eye to perceive only certain parts of a color-polarized film. The process had been known since the mid-nineteenth century, and a few monochromatic 3-D films were made in the 1920s and 1930s. Due to technical limitations and the uncomfortable glasses the novelty was short-lived. It was briefly reintroduced in early 1980s horror flicks and television broadcasts, and in panoramic IMAX 3-D movies of the 1990s.

Hollywood's flirtation with 3-D heralded the first comic book in 3-D by Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert: Three Dimension Comics featuring Mighty Mouse (1953). Over 50 3-D comics were produced from 1953 to 1954. Three-dimensional comics are viewed with the same glasses as in 3-D cinema. The necessity of hand-drawing limited early 3-D comics to bi-color images but after the 1970s limited polychromy was possible using computer drafting technologies. Three-dimensional comics appeared sporadically into the 1990s engaging some venerable talents of comic arts: Ray Zone, Jack Kirby, and Wally Wood.

In the 1990s, computer-generated Magic Eye stereograms put a new twist on traditional stereoscopic viewing. Based on the theories of Bela Julesz and Christopher Tyler, Magic Eye artists employed a sophisticated computer algorithm which manipulated images at the pixel level, disguising simple stereoscopic images within another unrelated pattern. By free viewing (seeing a stereoscopic image without a stereoscope) the hidden image emerges from the generic background. Between 1992 and 1995 Magic Eye sold 25 million books in 26 languages worldwide and in 1994 Magic Eye syndicated a weekly image to over 200 newspapers.

By the late 1990s, computerized flight simulators, high-altitude surveillance photography, and weapon targeting systems employed stereoscopic science. Using stereo-photography NASA's Pathfinder Mission (1997) produced interactive topographical maps of Mars. For its report on the Mars mission, National Geographic featured some of the 3-D images from the Pathfinder Mission and included a pair of 3-D glasses to view them. Gradually, this technology became available to a broader consumer culture through holographic and virtual reality devices. Amateur and professional interest in stereoscopy was accompanied by intense collecting of antique stereo-viewers and stereoscopic imagery. There were regional, national, and international associations; a magazine devoted to the topic, Stereo World ; and numerous internet sites. Although Victorian stereographs have become the province of antiquarians and museums, the desire to see in 3-D remains of unfailing interest to a popular audience.

—Michael J. Murphy