The ` Brief` History of Stereo Photography
The taking and viewing of stereo photographs
was a popular pass time in the nineteenth century.
In 280 A.D., Euclid was the first to recognize that depth perception is obtained when each eye simultaneously receives one of two dissimilar images of the same object. In 1584 Leonado da Vinci studied the perception of depth and, unlike most of contemporaries, produced paintings and sketches that showed a clear understanding of shading, texture and viewpoint projection. Around the year 1600, Giovanni Battista della Porta produced the first artificial 3-D drawing based on Euclid’s notions on how 3-D perception by humans works. This was followed in 1611 when Kepler's Dioptrice was published which included a detailed description of the projection theory of human stereo vision.
Early stereo photography Queen Victoria visited the World's Fair in London in 1851 and was so entranced by the stereoscopes on display that she precipitated an enthusiasm for three-dimensional photography that soon made it a popular form of entertainment world-wide.
It was Sir Charles Wheatstone who in 1833 first came up with the idea of presenting slightly different images to the two eyes using a device he called a reflecting mirror stereoscope. When viewed stereoscopically, he showed that the two images are combined in the brain to produce 3-D depth perception.
The invention of the Brewster Stereoscope by the Scottish scientist Sir David Brewster in 1849 provided a template for all later stereoscopes.
This in turn stimulated the mass production of stereo photography which flourished alongside mono-photography.
The invention of the Brewster Stereoscope by the Scottish scientist Sir David Brewster in 1849 provided a template for all later stereoscopes.
This in turn stimulated the mass production of stereo photography which flourished alongside mono-photography.
This Stereoscope was built after the original Holmes Stereoscope. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) has built 1861 – using the principle of the Brewster's lens-and-prism Stereoscope – a simple, lightweight and cheap appliance, suitable to watch the stereoscopic photographs glued to the 3,5x7 inch cardboard. Holmes – an American physicist, poet and writer – did not patent his invention. Despite of this it was acknowledged as a world standard and remained unaltered more than half a century without giving its inventor any material profits.
ANAGLYPH 3D
The discovery of anaglyph 3-D appeared in the 1850's as the result of experiments by the Frenchman Joseph D'Almeida. Colour separation took place using red/green or red/green filters and early anaglyphs were displayed using glass stereo lantern slides.William Friese-Green created the first 3-D anaglypic motion pictures in 1889 which first went on show to the public in 1893. These anaglypic films designated as plasticons or plastigrams enjoyed great success during the 1920's. The films used a single film with the green image emulsion on one side of the film and the red image emulsion on the other. In 1922, an interactive plasticon opened at the Rivoli Theater in New York titled "Movies of the Future". The film provided the viewer with an optional ending. The happy ending was viewed using the green filter whilst the tragic ending could be seen using the red filter.
Stereo photography peaked around the turn of the century and went out of fashion as movies increased in popularity. In 1939 William Gruber saw a way to make use of the newly invented flexible 35mm film by Kodak and teamed up with Harold Graves to form the View-Master company. These toys first became available during the 1940's and are still available today.
