Stereoscopic Cards

 

Stereoscopic cards, stereograph cards, or stereoview cards, are the double image photos that appear in 3D when viewed with a stereoviewer. They became immensely popular in the mid nineteenth century and they vary greatly in subject and make. This selection is mostly pre 1950.

Stereoscopic cards, stereoview cards, or stereograms, are cards with two nearly identical images side by side that, when viewed through a stereoscope, or stereoscopic viewer, gives off a 3D effect. The illusion of depth is created when a slightly different image meets each eye.

 

Renowned British scientist and inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone invented stereoscopy in 1840 and Sir David Brewster brought it into its existing form by replacing the mirrors and using lenses. (Interestingly, the pseudoscope, introduced in 1852, reverses the two images, making the depth perception appear opposite. For example an object up close would appear far away and vice versa, a solid object would appear hollow, or an elevated subject would appear to be in a depression.)

 

Wheatstone’s first stereoscope was bulky and complicated and the images used were crude drawings until 1844 when stereoscopic photographs were demonstrated in Germany. It took off in Great Britain in 1851 after Queen Victoria saw one at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London and it was patented by French photographer and student of Louis Daguerre, Antoine Claudet in 1853. It finally became popular in the United States after 1862 when Oliver Wendell Holmes and Joseph Bates invented the simpler and less cumbersome Holmes stereopticon hand-held viewer, which then dominated the market and became the world standard.

 

Stereograph cards were originally drawings but with photography were made into daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, lithographs, and modern cardstock and photopaper. Stereoscopes for computer monitors are even made.

 

Stereoscopes have many uses. They are used in photogrammetry, the century and a half year old technology today used in topographic mapping, engineering, architecture, geology, archaeology, and meteorology. Of course stereoscopes are used for entertainment as well. 3D depth information is gathered by computers using two images with corresponding likeness and comparing pixels and subject sizes and depths. When they caught on in the mid 19^th century travel stereoviews were very popular, as people sitting in a New York parlor could enjoy the World Fair in Chicago, the cities of Europe, the pyramids of Egypt, or the mysteries of the Orient from the comfort of their chair.

 

Stereoscopic cards were also taken of early American railroads and railways,the Russo-Japanese War, the Spanish American War, Victorian domestic scenes, Hollywood film stars, underwater scenes, films and comics, animals, insects and flowers, the American West, martial arts, aviation, and much more. Civil War Stereoscopes were very popular. In the 1870’s local photographers even offered to photograph and sell slides of people’s family, homes, or property (these are rare to find today). There are also buildings, portraits, landscapes, etc. Popular stereoview brands include H.C. White, Keystone, Kilburn, and Underwood & Underwood.

 

They were very affordable and vast libraries sprang up exclusively for stereoscopic images. The decline of the stereoscope came at the end of the 19^th century when technology evolved to print photographs in newspapers and magazines and declined drastically in the 1930s with the coming of age of motion pictures. There are however still numerous enthusiasts of stereoscopy and collectors of stereograms, stereoviewers and stereoscopic cards.