In the nineteenth century, if you wanted to immerse yourself in another world, chances are you would find the nearest stereoscope. Popular in homes, d

In the Stereoscope, Another World

submited by

Style Pass

2024-09-29 15:30:03

In the nineteenth century, if you wanted to immerse yourself in another world, chances are you would find the nearest stereoscope. Popular in homes, dime museums, and schools throughout the 1800s, stereoscopes presented people of all stripes and classes with a new way of seeing themselves and the world around them.

Stereoscopes, at their simplest, use a mirror and reflection within a small goggle-type box to create a three-dimensional image out of two-dimensional photographs. A card—known as a stereogram or stereograph—with a pair of pictures showing two slightly different perspectives of a subject, scene, or artwork is placed in front of the stereoscope’s binocular openings, such that the viewer looks into the lens and sees a tiny chamber of surprising depth and fullness. Each eye sees a different picture, but the brain stitches them together to create a single image with an illusory depth of field. Like the TARDIS, stereoscopes offered the gift of something bigger on the inside.

The English inventor and King’s College professor Charles Wheatstone first described the concept in 1838 in a paper read before the Royal Society of London . Wheatstone hit on the idea of manipulating human binocular vision with mirrors, considering it so simple he was surprised no artist or philosopher had yet considered the idea, given the laws of perspective.