Page 39 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 39/206
Charles Wheatstone: Mirror Stereoscope 1838 + Elliot/Brewster: Lenticular Stereoscope 1839
There are several contenders for the invention of the stereoscope - including a ‘Mr Elliot’ - a mathematician of Edinburgh, who according to Brewster, had had the initial idea as early as 1823. In 1839, David Brewster, the inventor of the Kaleidoscope, constructed a stereoscope using lenses to amalgamate the left/right images. Unable to find a precision-manufacturer of his lenticular viewer in the UK, went to Paris, where his stereoscope was improved by the specialist instrument-maker, Jules Duboscq, who, realising the potential, went on to specialise in stereo photography. It was Brewster’s improved Stereoscope that became a very popular ‘home-entertainment’ device after it was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Queen Victoria bought one, and by the 1850s, Jules Duboscq had created his own lenticular stereoscope and used a modified camera to create stereo photographs using the Daguerreotype process. John Benjamin Dancer had invented a binocular ‘stereo’ camera in 1852. The availability of stereo-cameras and stereoscopic viewers through the latter half of the 19th century made stereo 3d viewing an adjunct to stereo photography as a popular home entertainment. By the early 20th century, Jacques Henri Lartigue had made hundreds of stereo photographs - some reproduced as monoscopic images in his Diary of a Century (1970).
The transformation of photography into a form of family home entertainment began as early as the 1850s - people started collecting photographic prints and building them into family photograph albums, and Brewsters successful stereoscope brought these into 3D - a thrilling and amusing home entertainment.