My View from the Pilot house By Mike Boys Pilot News Consultant
Having a stereopticon was exciting and fascinating and a wonderful source for home entertainment. And they were in 3-D!
     My first introduction to a stereopticon (also called a stereoscope), was about 1942 at the Plymouth Carnegie Library. I used to go to the shelf and sort through the box of double-photo cardboard slides until I found one that looked interesting. 

    I would put the cardboard slides with two identical pictures into the holder and then hold onto the handle and enjoy a trip to the Eiffel Tower in France, the construction of the Panama Canal, or wherever the pictures were taken. The thing that amazed me was that it was in three-dimensional form.  What great fun! 
    The library had hundreds of cardboard slides to view. This was, of course, before TV.
    My mother-in-law had a stereoscope with some slides and I would remark how much fun I had as a kid looking at the photos. Thanks to her, we now have that stereoscope and the slides. Now my children and grandchildren enjoy, (well, they looked at this old time form of entertainment for a moment), but because they didn’t move, talk or were in color they became bored with the photos and they would go back to watching TV.
    How times have changed.

HISTORY OF THE STEREOSCOPE
    Stereoscopes or stereo viewers, were America’s most popular form of entertainment in the 1800s and early 1900s. Sir Charles Wheat-stone was the inventor of the first stereoscope and had it patented in 1838.  He had experimented with simple stereoscope drawings in 1832. 
    Later the principles were combined  to form the stereoscope. Wow! What an invention! 
    People just loved looking at his drawings. This was several years before photography was invented.
    However, Wheatstone’s stereoscope was not as popular as a later version made by Oliver Wendell Holmes. His stereoscope was cal-led the Holmes Stereo Viewer and was the most common type used in America from 1881 until 1939.
    Ok, that’s nice, but what is a stereograph? Well, a stereograph is simply a simultaneous double-image of the same subject that – when viewed through a stereoscope – appears to be one three-dimensional photograph or drawing.
    Stereograph photos are made by a single camera with two lenses set approximately two-and-a-half inches apart. This is about the same as the distance between your eyes. The viewer simply inserts the cardboard slide into the holder and, while looking through the lenses, moves the holder back and forth until there is one image and is in focus.
    The stereoscope was so popular that photographers were sent all over the world to take photos of people, places and things of interest – and even big events like the Olympics, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. And people wanted to see these things. Remember, photos weren’t always available for people to view back then. 
    You could order a box of ‘em from the catalogue – 25 stereograph slides for $1.25.
    If you phone in your order now we will send you a FREE . . . uh, no that’s another form of advertising.
     Well, that’s about it for the stereoscope.  Sooooo here’s lookin’ at ya – through the stereoscope, that is. 
    Wow! You’re in 3-D!
    
POP QUIZ: Indiana has earned the nickname “Mother of U.S. Vice-Presidents.” There were five of them elected. Can you name them?
 ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S POP QUIZ:  The question was: What Indiana city had the most successful gold fish farm in the United States? Answer: Martinsville
 
 Well, that’s it for now . . . so until next time. . . this is my view from the Pilot house.
    Mike Boys’ column appears Thursdays in the Pilot News.