1874 Sterograph Viewmaster Steropticons with Photos

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Stereoscopes, also known as stereopticons or stereo viewers, were one of America's most popular forms of entertainment in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The first patented stereoscope was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. Wheatstone had experimented with simple stereoscopic drawings in 1832, several years before photography was invented. Later, the two principles were combined to form the stereoscope. Wheatstone's stereoscope was not as popular as a later version, made by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Called the Holmes Stereo Viewer, it was the most common type of stereoscope from 1881 until 1939. A stereoscope is composed of two pictures mounted next to each other, and a set of lenses to view the pictures through. Each picture is taken from a slightly different viewpoint that corresponds closely to the spacing of the eyes. The left picture represents what the left eye would see, and likewise for the right picture. When observing the pictures through a special viewer, the pair of two-dimensional pictures merge together into a single three-dimensional photograph. We can see a 3D picture through a stereoscope for the same reason a building appears three-dimensional. The right and left eyes see a slightly different version of the same scene, and taken together, we get an illusion of depth. This phenomenon had been known for quite read more

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