Stereographic Stories: Love, War, and Nineteenth-Century Virtual Reality
Think of the first time you watched a 3D film in the movie theatre. You would have sat eagerly in your seat with the 3D glasses perched on your nose and, as the movie began, may have been taken aback – even startled – by the images that seemingly jumped out toward you from the screen.
Believe it or not, this ostensibly twenty-first-century experience has a precedent in a peculiar sort of technology which blossomed in popularity in the 1800s. In the 1830s, British scientist Charles Wheatstone made the curious discovery that, if you had two pictures which each depicted the same scene from a slightly different perspective – think left-eye and right-eye views – and viewed each picture through a different eye, your brain would assemble them into a three-dimensional view (Thompson, 2017). Wheatstone proceeded to have an optician, R. Murray, construct a device based on this observation. The device designed by Murray was the first stereoscope, an instrument which allowed the viewer to experience two separate images as a single, three-dimensional one (Wade, 2012).
As the years progressed, so did stereoscopic technology. In 1849, scientist David Brewster crafted a hand-held device with lenses, thus inventing the first lens-based stereoscope (Wade, 2012). An industry began to develop around this new technology, with hundreds of thousands of stereoscopes being produced and a plethora of stereographic cards being sold. Stereographers were sent throughout the world to capture views for the new medium and cards were printed with these views, often with explanatory text. Even Pope Pius X agreed that stereographs were the next best thing to real travel itself (Babbitts, 2004)!
In 1859, the stereoscopic device was further refined when physician Oliver Wendell Holmes designed a more economical model of the hand-held device, consisting of two prismatic lenses and a wooden stand to hold the stereographic card (Library of Congress, n.d.). In an article written by Holmes for the Atlantic Monthly in 1859, he stated:
The first effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out as if they would scratch our eyes out. The elbow of a figure stands forth so as to make us almost uncomfortable. Then there is such a frightful amount of detail, that we have the same sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. A painter shows us masses; the stereoscopic figure spares us nothing. (Library of Congress, n.d.)
Stereograph © Murney Tower Museum
Why are we discussing stereoscopy, and what is the connection to Murney Tower Museum? Amongst the numerous objects in our General Collection are the curious artifacts which inspired this inquiry: a Holmes-type stereoscope and a couple sets of stereographic cards. One particularly noteworthy set in our collection is made up of six cards, one for each scene, published by Underwood and Underwood in 1900. An early producer and distributor of stereographic images, Underwood and Underwood was at one time the largest publisher of stereographs in the world, publishing twenty-five thousand stereographs a day by 1901 (Babbitts, 2004). The company had an office in Toronto and this particular stereographic story found its way into our collection.
The story told in this set would have been a familiar one for many nineteenth-century families – yet it is also a personal and poignant one. The stereographic set begins with a scene titled “The First and Hardest Battle – The Call to War.” As the name suggests, the card depicts that heart-sinking moment: a man and woman are looking sadly toward the letter in the man’s hand and the newspaper laying on the floor. War has broken out, and the man has been called upon to enlist in the military.
It is interesting to note that, in this set, each of the six scenes is accompanied by six lines of text - the title of the stereograph, translated into six languages. English and French are given first, followed by German, Spanish, Swedish, and Russian. This multitude of languages would have meant that anyone who knew any of these languages could view, read, and enjoy these stereographs, thus expanding the audience that the American producer, Underwood and Underwood, could reach.
The call to war in the first scene necessarily means an inevitable departure. The second scene in this set is titled “Farewell Darling – I go to fight for Queen and Country” and depicts a woman embracing her rifle-wielding husband before he leaves for the war. The title gives a glimpse into the mentality of a soldier off to war in the nineteenth century; while a melancholy moment, it was also an honourable one. To go to war was to fight for and to distinguish oneself in the service of one’s country and queen.
The story of war, however, is unavoidably one of pain and suffering, and this stereographic story did not deny this reality. In the third scene, “In a Field Hospital on the Tugela River,” an injured soldier lies in a hospital bed, tended to by a nurse. The fourth scene is similarly distressing: “Sad news from the Battlefield” shows the wife, an older man, and another woman each grief-stricken after receiving the upsetting news about their wounded soldier.
Hope is not lost, however. The next stereograph, “On furlough - the glad reunion,” illustrates a happier scene where the soldier on leave steps in the door toward the outstretched arms of his joyful wife. The final scene depicts him narrating “The Story of the Battle,” surrounded by eager listeners. Our stereographic story, therefore, ends on a lighthearted note, a happy reunion. The classic features of popular content – present relevance, familiar experience, happy ending – peppered with suspense and emotion help explain why Underwood and Underwood’s stereographic cards would have gained such popularity in 1900.
To us, stereoscopic technology appears worlds away from our present reality. Nowadays, we have a multitude of forms of virtual entertainment at our fingertips. We’re accustomed to our cell phones, laptops, and televisions. It is easy to forget the relative recency of such technology and how entertainment technology has transformed with the passage of time. From automatons in the Hellenistic world, to the invention of the phonograph in 1877, to 3D movies and virtual reality technology today, stereoscopy represents one of so many moments in time. It is easy to take our world for granted, but artifacts like these that now belong to the archives of Murney Tower Museum can transport us to past times and remind us that the world we live in is remarkably recent – and transitory – phenomenon.
References
Babbitts, J. (2004). Stereographs and the construction of a visual culture in the United States. In L. Rabinovitz & A. Geil (Eds.), Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture (pp. 126-149). Duke University Press.
Library of Congress. (n.d.). Stereograph cards. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection /stereo/background.html
Thompson, C. (2017, October). Stereographs were the original virtual reality. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sterographs -original-virtual -reality-180964771/
Wade, N.J. (2012). Wheatstone and the origins of moving stereoscopic images. Perception 41(8), 901-24.