View Master

This page is dedicated to the art and history of stereo photography. You may be familiar with the famous ViewMaster toy viewer that many of us had when we were younger. But did you know that stereo photography is a real "thing"? Going as far back as the dawn of photography there have been examples of stereo photography used in the latest novelties of the day...the stereopticon. You may have even seen some of the many stereo view photo cards that still exist! There were special cameras sold to create your own stereo views. By the 1930s and 40s the personal stereo viewer was more popular than ever when a new way to hold multiple stereo views on a single strip or disc was invented. In the 1950s and 60s, stereo viewing made the leap to movies and suddenly everything was better watched in "3-D". It's even easy today to create your own 3-D stereo view...I'll show you how later.