My First 3D: The Story of View-Master [Viewmaster]

In spite of your age, there’s an excellent chance that a View-Master was lying around either your bedroom or a pal’s. The enduring red goggles are the precise childhood diversion-cheap and briefly amusing. In addition they have a protracted history.

The principle that makes the View-Master a bit quasi-3D fun is a fundamental one behind all our vision. Stereoscopic viewers-simple devices that essentially make you go cross-eyed to perceive photographic depth-had been exploiting this principle since the 19th century. All it takes is a basic optical effect the brain teaches itself early on: when two images from slightly different angles are viewed by our eyes, we combine them into a unified perception. The Victorians, with their pipes and smokestacks and monocles, used to laze about and amuse themselves with the first stereoscopic toys! Oh my! A vivid image of a savage tribesman! Fast forward a century, and the assumption gets an engaging makeover.

In the 1930s, amateur photographer William Gruber teamed up with Sawyer’s Photo Services, a small firm that produced souvenir postcards. But postcards were boring, even inside the 1930s. What wasn’t boring was Gruber’s ingenius, custom-made stereoscopic photo setup, which combined two Kodak Bantam Special cameras onto a single tripod. Calibrated correctly, the dual-cam system produced a pair of images that may be become a rudimentary 3D scene through stereopsis.

Realizing that he had successful on his hands, Gruber put together a prototype that could allow people to take their favorite scenes with them. He debuted his creation at the 1940 World’s Fair in Big Apple-a year later, he had sold 100,000. The device’s simplicity and quick fun caught on even quicker-soldiers used it to train during WWII, families toured national parks from their homes, and after landing the humungous Disney license, a number of kids stared at 3D stills of Mickey.

Fisher-Price now owns the tech, and knows not to attempt to fix what ain’t broke-the View-Master’s basic design hasn’t changed inside the 80 years since its invention. Pop a film reel from 19340 into your View-Master from 2010, and it’ll work adore it did at the sector’s Fair. And a complete community of stereoscopic fanatics- somehow including Queen guitarist Brian May -is devoted to the optical illusion, even creating their own custom View-Master reels (if I only I had known I may have seen my goofy prom pictures in 3D!). Since 1939, over 1.5 billion View-Masters were sold. So next time you notice yours lying around your childhood bedroom or basement, pick it up and think about Gruber. Oh look, a giraffe! Click.

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This post is tagged: d, Story, ViewMaster