Stereoscopes have collectors seeing double double

It is impossible to overstate the enormous impact that stereoscopic viewing had on the cultural life of Europe and America from 1850 to the 1930s.
It all started when Queen Victoria was given a stereoscopic viewer and some viewing cards at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London 1851. But it was Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), the great American poet, physician and essayist, who saw the educational value of stereoscopes, making them much more than just an amusement.
Homes thought stereoscopes so important that he strongly suggested the establishment of vast stereoscopic libraries to serve as educational institutions. This call sent armies of professional photographers to the ends of the earth to record for posterity: wars and natural disasters, architecture, and art, agriculture and industry, transportation and landscapes, and portraits of famous people.
A stereoscope is a photographic viewing devise that uses human binocular vision to create the illusion of three-dimensions. Two photographs that are nearly, but not quite identical are mounted on an adjustable slide to be focused and viewed through a pair of special lenses.
Imagine the effect such a devise would have in the very early days of photography itself and in the decades before movies or television.
These devises were popular parlor entertainments in many Victorian homes as well as important educational tools in schools and libraries. Currently, one of the most important collections in the New York Public Library is the Robert Dennis collection of 12,000 stereoscopic views amassed from between 1850 and 1920.
These views include people, fashions, historical and natural event that we would otherwise have only verbal accounts of. These include the Spanish American War, the San Francisco earthquake, the building of the Panama Canal, as well as Native American peoples, landscapes and architecture that have long been lost to the world.
Even after the movies in the 1930s and television in the 1950s eclipsed the importance of stereoscopes, people still found them fascinating enough to make the “View Master” a stereoscopic devise introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair that used flat reels instead of cards, such a popular Christmas gift for children in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Old stereoscopic views have become extremely important for the same reason Oliver Wendell Holmes thought they would. People will always want to want to see and experience rare and historic views of people, places, objects and events from days gone by so they can better understand them.
Appraisals: Stereoscopic Views: “Lighting a Pipe,” two prospectors in the mountains, #114 (Thurlow), $125; “View of Bar Harbor,” Maine Views, 1901, $90; “A Thousand Boys in Blue” (Griffin & Griffin), $14; “Admiral Sampson’s Fleet at Blockade Havana” (J. Davis), 1898, $12; “Bailey Co. Jewelry Store,” Philadelphia (Langenheim), 1898, $127; Scene from St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904, $18; Railroad Survey Engine 11, Bitter Creek, $290; Scenes From the Life of Christ, set, $35; “Tepees of the Sioux (Zimmerman), $125.
Stereoscopes: Most hand-held stereoscopes range from $75 to $200, depending on materials and craftsmanship. Specially designed scopes will be more: Jules Richard, “Taxiphot,” 1899, $1,500; 1860s “Quirolo, “Bates Pedestal” or “Graphoscope,” $400 each; Lewis of Keystone “Televiewer,” 1875, $350.
Arthur Schwerdt is the author of “The Antique Story Book: Finding the Real Value of Old Things” (www.amazon.com), and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton. Send your comments or appraisal requests with photo to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.