Virginia Mills looks back at the invention of the stereoscope and the rival claims of two Royal Society Fellows, Charles Wheatstone and David Brewster. This year marks the anniversary of the invention of the stereoscope.
I myself was a particularly jealous guardian of a Disney incarnation that may be familiar to children of the s, though new models continue to be made to this day.
For millennials born with an iPad in one hand and a virtual reality device in the other, the principles behind the stereoscope are also the foundation of 3D films and virtual reality. Essentially, two images of the same object or scene are presented at slightly different angles, and viewed using either a different lens for each eye or a system of angled mirrors that make the images appear larger and more distant, forcing our suggestible brains into merging the images and interpreting them in three dimensions.
The first stereoscope, designed by Charles Wheatstone and published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society vol. Image on p.
What makes the modern relevance of this invention particularly remarkable is that the stereoscope was invented in , years ago. The man responsible was Charles Wheatstone FRS , who published the first description of his stereoscope in the volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Though designed principally to investigate binocular vision, the stereoscope was sold as a form of drawing-room entertainment. Early purchasers would have had to create their own images to use with the instrument; Wheatstone provided simple line drawings as an example, but explained that it would also work with more complex, artistic renderings:. Like many purveyors of educational technology, they claimed their new form was uniquely instructive—better, even, than mere books.
Many teachers were persuaded, and by some accounts millions of students began using stereoscopes. This was about more than education. It was about forging a new style of cognition and behavior. Indeed, stereograph makers downplayed the obvious joy of the device, the better to render it educational. If the teacher used it correctly, it would transport the children abroad. Some literary elites were alarmed by the rise of the stereograph.
The French poet Baudelaire had enough. Eventually, the stereograph was killed off—by even newer, more bewitching media.
Though the craze endured for over 60 years, by the s, postcards had become the hot new photo item to share and collect. Then around the same time, radio arrived, and it permanently unseated the stereograph as social parlor-room entertainment.
Until, of course, VR re-emerged. In an entrepreneur named Palmer Luckey unveiled a Kickstarter campaign to produce the Oculus Rift, sparking a renaissance in headmounted 3-D. But VR struggles with some existential questions.
What precisely is it good for? Are there things that cry out to be seen in VR? Is it the latest 3-D fad, or is it here to stay? Documentary filmmakers in particular are chewing on this problem. The director Jeff Orlowski shot Chasing Coral , an minute-long documentary about scientists and divers who engineer a system for recording, in time-lapse imagery, the bleaching of coral reefs.
Intrigued by VR, he also shot a six-minute VR film of the underwater action. While the traditional documentary is better at telling a long story, he says, VR gives people a particularly physical sense of the issue. Very few people dive. And of all the experiences where you want to look around in all degrees, going underwater is a big one.
His device was made from daguerreotypes very highly polished silver surface plate. The problem was that they created irregular reflections, and the images they created weren't clear enough. Because of this, people weren't really interested in using his device. The Stereoscope that Sir Charles Wheatstone created was not very popular until eight years later when Sir David Brewster decided to take a look at the device.
He found the concept fascinating but the device itself lacking. Instead of polished surfaces, Sir David Brewster used two lenses that he put six centimeters apart in a small box. The box came with two holes by the side and a small slit at the bottom. The hole at the bottom allowed images to slide in and out while the holes by the side allowed light in.
He called this device a refracting stereoscope but did not stop there. He then marketed this idea to Queen Victoria in at the Great Exhibition. She was blown away by the device and ordered a few hundred of it to be made. That was the opening that he needed. In less than three months he sold almost three hundred thousand stereoscopes, and the public became obsessed with the device and stereo cards. A company named London Stereoscopic was created, and they started employing photographers to travel around the world and take pictures of breathtaking sights.
These pictures or stereo cards as they were called were used to educate and entertain. Sir David Brewster's refracting stereoscope had its flaws, and viewers soon realized just how taxing using the device could be. Once the novelty wore off, people discovered that using the equipment for a while gave them headaches or dizziness.
This was as a result of the brain trying to view two scenes at once with each different eye. These complaints prompted Joseph L. Bates and Oliver Wendell Holmes to make adjustments to Brewster's refracting stereoscope by modifying the viewing distance and making it less heavy.
This version was also easier to make and cheaper too, making it more popular than the Brewster refracting stereoscope. Some people however protested against the device, viewing it as an alteration of the natural order of things.
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