Stereographs were sold at tourist spots, from storefronts, through mail order catalogues, and door to door. In the later nineteenth century large factories churned out thousands of stereographs a day using assembly-line methods. Historian William Culp Darrah estimated that between 18 as many as 12,000 stereo-photographers took between 3.5 and 4.5 million individual images, which were printed on upwards of 400 million stereographs. Stereo-photographers included the obscure and the famous William Henry Jackson, Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, Eadweard Muybridge, and Matthew Brady are better known producers. Initially, stereographs were produced by lone figures who often took the photograph, processed the film, assembled the stereograph and sold it to tourists. Usually a stereograph can be dated to within a few years based solely on physical details. Collectors attest to the bewildering diversity of stereographs: examples are known with tintype, daguerreotype, ambrotype, and lithographic images pasted on paper, cardstock, glass, and porcelain mounts. Since the overall size and shape of the stereograph was dictated by the stereoscope (similar to later standardized mass media like cassette tapes or CDs) stereographic publishers anticipated consumer desire and sought market niches through aesthetic innovation. Later thematic boxed sets were accompanied by maps and an explanatory guidebook. The photographer's, or more commonly publisher's, imprint and a short caption might be shown on the front, with a longer text on the reverse. Generally, stereographs are four-by-seven inch rectangular cards having two stereo-photographs pasted side-by-side. Popularity depended on a plentiful supply of imagery in the form of stereographs, also called stereocards or stereoviews. With cheap viewers and abundant imagery, stereoscopic viewing came within reach of a broad middle-class audience, fulfilling the London Stereoscopic Company's motto "A Stereoscope In Every Home." In the 1840s Wheatstone's device used daguerreotypes and calotypes, but only after the 1851 introduction of glass-plate negatives could stereo-photographs be mass-produced. Although the interest of Queen Victoria ensured immediate popularity, early photographic technologies hampered broad circulation. Brewster's lenticular stereoscope, a small box outfitted with lenses and a slot to hold stereographic imagery, debuted in 1851 at London's Great International Exhibition. Wheatstone's awkward device was merely a scientific curiosity until modified by William Brewster in 1849. If the imagery was properly prepared, the visual effects of solidity, depth, and realism were unparalleled. It was soon discovered that stereo-photographs could be prepared for Wheatstone's device by simultaneously taking two photographs with a double-lensed camera. The viewer's brain combined the two images into a single stereoscopic image with qualities similar to that of unaided vision. By using mirrors the reflecting stereoscope channelled vision so that only one of the drawings could be seen by each eye. Wheatstone created two drawings of an object which mimicked the slightly different perspective our two eyes have of a single scene. In 1832 British physicist Charles Wheatstone invented a device-the reflecting stereoscope-which induced normal binocular vision using prepared imagery. Paintings present but a single image, while in normal binocular vision the two different images received by each eye are synthesized by the brain into a single image, allowing us to perceive depth and spatial relationships. It has been long known that two-dimensional representations, like drawing and painting, are a poor imitation of human visual experiences. The Victorian stereoscope was part of a general trend in the nineteenth century towards more realistic visual representations, mass-produced for an emergent commodity culture. Eventually overshadowed by cinema and later electronic visual technologies, the optical principles of the stereoscope grounded many popular visual entertainments of the twentieth century: View-Master viewers, 3-D cinema and comic books, and Magic Eye stereograms. Popular from 1850-1920, the stereoscope answered desires for greater realism in visual representation while its popular, yet intimate, visual experience prefigured visual media like cinema and television. In the nineteenth century the marriage of stereoscopy, photography, and industrial production resulted in the first photographic mass media: the Victorian stereoscope. Stereoscopy-creating three-dimensional visual experiences from two-dimensional materials-informed most every visual medium of the Modern age: art, photography, cinema, television, and newspapers.
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