Ian Ference's 3D blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
A random search on a French merchants' website led me to discover the fact that Vistascreen made views marketed to the French market - and there are almost certainly more.
It's not surprising that the newly-formed Tru-Vue company of Rock Island, Illinois decided to try their hand in the advertising market. Nor is it surprising that they chose a local institution for one of their first advertising filmstrips. What is surprising is that this early subject was a girls' Catholic school run by the Salesian Sisters - and that the stereo photography is actually pretty darn good, considering!
Looking for a ridiculous series of stereoscopic photographs on one subject that were probably all taken in the course of an hour and possibly all given captions in the span of two minutes? Then look no further, my friends.
1933 in the finest borough of the greatest city in America is brought to life, in sepia-toned 3D in a rare second strip from Tru Vue. See the Botanical Gardens, Prospect Park, the industry on the Gowanus Canal, the Red Hook Grain Terminal - and more - all in stereo pairs & anaglyphic 3D!
On 1 April 1915, an MoS-3 piloted by Sergeant Jean Navarre took to the skies - where it encountered a German Albatros B.II. Some sharpshooting by the observer, Lieutenant Jean Robert, brought down the biplane - leading to the capture of the craft and its occupants, and the first victory for the MS 12 Escadrille, and medals for Navarre and Robert.
In an attempt to start sorting through some of the piles of random amateur glass stereoviews in my collection, I picked one at random. It appears to be a family at wintertime, somewhere in Germany, in the early- or mid-1930s.
Sometimes, whilst one is sorting through a newly acquired collection, a new slide or card proves just captivating - and one winds up just admiring it through their favorite stereoscope for minutes on end. This was one from my latest acquisition which had this effect on me.
The Grotte de la Devèze in Courniou, France, known in English as the The Glass Spinner's Palace, was photographed and released by Bruguiere in the late 1940s - near the end of the era of glass-plate diapositives. I obtained a near-pristine copy the other day and thought I'd share.
Miraculously, the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station survived the great fire of 1875 due to a German immigrant fireman. Happily, local stereographic photo outfit Lovejoy & Foster produced a fantastic, painterly view of the great steam-powered pumping station within 4 years later.
In additional to his usual fare - fancy estates, towns, zoos, and so on - VistaScreen's photographer Stanley Long dabbled in artistic figure studies. Largely unadvertised for obvious reasons - this was 1950s Britain after all - few of these sets are floating around. Here's the first in the Miss Continentale series.