Standard size: 7" x 3.5" or 18 x 9 cm.
This listing is for three cards. All have images on the front and back. The photos show one side of the three, then the other, then two close-ups. There is no information on which company published these or when they were printed. Early 1900's.
Text on cards:
122 Fountain and Group of Water carriers, Constantinople.
103 Indian Rhinoceros
114 Arab Woman
113 George Street, Sydney, Australia
104 Two-horned Rhinoceros
121 The Castle, Kenilworth, England
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The following information is taken from the Conexions Website (http://cnx.org/content/m13784/latest/). Visit it for a nice article on the history of stereographs.
Between the 1840s and the 1920s, stereographs served as an important method of entertainment, education, and virtual travel—predecessors to contemporary forms of media such as television and movies. As Burke Long argues, “Mass-produced and relatively cheap, the integrated system of mechanical viewer and photographs became fashionable for classroom pedagogy, tourist mementos, and parlor travel to exotic places of the world” (90).
People viewed stereographs at homes, schools, and churches, gazing at images documenting almost every subject imaginable from
astronomy to zoology. According to stereograph collector and historian William Darrah, stereographs were used to teach millions of American children about geography, natural history, and a range of other subejcts (50). Many in the nineteenth century embraced photography as a medium that, unlike other arts such as painting, presented the “truth” through exact rendering of a scene.
Stereographs seemed even more real and more engaging by simulating three dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes called stereographs “sun sculptures” and commented, “All pictures in which perspective and light and shade are properly managed, have more or less the effect of solidity; but by this instrument that effect is so heightened as to produce an appearance of reality which cheats the senses with its seeming truth” (16).
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The last photo shows a common example of a stereoscope, the machine that was used to view these cards. The image is from http://www.phantomranch.net/3dphotog/3dphotog.htm which also gives instructions on how to make your own 3d photos.
Click on the photos for the zoom option to see larger images.
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