My interest in 3-D

started when I was 9 years old and rummaging through old boxes in our basement. One of the boxes contained the pieces of a very badly mangled stereoscope and a half dozen slides. My father and I managed to cobble it back together, and I had my first taste of "amazing 3-D." I tried making my own slides from pictures cut from duplicate magazines (with definitely mixed results). Then, about a year later, my parents bought me a Viewmaster and some slide reels. My "interest" blossomed into a full-fledged obsession.

As an adult, it's come into full flower. In addition to watching 3-D movies whenever the opportunity presents itself, I've purchased several stereoscopes (yes, I still have the one my dad and I rebuilt) and have a collection of a couple hundred stereo slides. Although the collection is fairly varied, I have sought out slides in two areas that are of particular interest to me, Eygptian and Biblical archeology and the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

I've put together a short history of the stereoscope illustrated in 3-D with slides from my collection.

We've also purchased a Loreo stereo camera, and are making our own stereo slides now. The drawback is that we can only share our pictures with friends who have stereopticons of their own, but stereopticons do make a great present for nearly any occasion. We hope to convert some of the pictures we've taken with the stereo camera so you can view them here with red/blue 3-d glasses.

Our most recent find is a 1944 Viewmaster viewer (the second model they put out). We're now in the process of searching out early viewmaster slide reels.

Our Viewmaster

For more info on viewmasters, check out the Viewmaster Page and Ed's Unoffical Viewmaster Page.

The conversion of the stereo slides into anaglyphic (red/blue color separation) GIFs was done by Glenn French. For a view of some of Glenn's more "non-traditional" experiments with this process, check out the GIFs below.

BEAMS

MANTRA

SKYEYE

For more information on having your own 3-D images scanned using this same process, you can contact Glenn French at grfics@user1.channel1.com.

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