Part 1
Stereoscope
As part of our AGM this year we had a bit of a ‘Show and Tell’ Presentation where you could bring along an item of historical or sentimental value, tell a story about an ancestor or relate a story that resonated.
John Searl who is also the Deputy Mayor of the Upper Lachlan Shire is a bit of an Antiques buff and from his incredible collection he brought in this amazing item called a ‘Stereoscope’. The forerunner to the modern day ‘Viewfinder’.
Remember them when you were a
kid, where you put the reel in the machine and turned the pictures round with
your hand, then if you were lucky you got upgraded to the ones that also had sound.
Gifted the Stereoscope
in 2008 from a local of Dalton, this device is c1900 and it is a wonderful example
of the design work of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In about 1860, Oliver who was already
renowned for being an American physician, poet and polymath, turned his
attention to making the Stereoscope in a simpler version. It became the most
popular of the 19th Century handheld forms. Interestingly, he never
patented the design, but gave it away freely.
It allowed
people who would not normally have the means to visit far off places, see what
happened at momentous events, look at the animal kingdom and immerse themselves
in something other than their daily lives.
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| Stereoscope c1900 |
What is a Stereoscope?
A
stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images,
depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single
three-dimensional image.
A typical
stereoscope provides each eye with a lens that makes the image seen through it
appear larger and more distant and usually also shifts its apparent horizontal
position, so that for a person with normal binocular depth perception the edges
of the two images seemingly fuse into one "stereo window". In current
practice, the images are prepared so that the scene appears to be beyond this
virtual window, through which objects are sometimes allowed to protrude, but
this was not always the custom. A divider or other view-limiting feature is
usually provided to prevent each eye from being distracted by also seeing the
image intended for the other eye.
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| Stereoscope image 2 |
Most people
can, with practice and some effort, view stereoscopic image pairs in 3D without
the aid of a stereoscope, but the physiological depth cues resulting from the
unnatural combination of eye convergence and focus required will be unlike
those experienced when actually viewing the scene in reality, making an
accurate simulation of the natural viewing experience impossible and tending to
cause eye strain and fatigue.
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| Photos for the Stereoscope |
Although more recent devices such as Realist-format 3D slide viewers and the View-Master are also stereoscopes, the word is now most commonly associated with viewers designed for the standard-format stereo cards that enjoyed several waves of popularity from the 1850s to the 1930s as a home entertainment medium.
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Promo Poster for Sawyers who started making the more modern version in 1939 |
Devices
such as polarized, anaglyph and shutter glasses which are used to view two
actually superimposed or intermingled images, rather than two physically
separate images, are not categorized as stereoscopes. (Wikipedia)
For more information on the history of
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