St Helen’s ArchivePreserving the past for the future

OT170

Stereoscope Viewer

Swansea RFC Memorabilia Community Interest Company

David Dow

1900s

Stereoscope viewer and images. Constructed by the company of Oliver Wendell Holmes in New York, USA out of polished walnut with brass fittings and steel retaining pins to hold the image. Square glass lenses are inserted at the viewing end. A brass clasp holds the handle and allows it to retract. Dimensions: w 7" x h 4" x length 12" (w 17.8cm x h 10cm x length 30.5cm)

This wooden stereoscope viewing apparatus is in the St Helen's Archive due to its connection with a stereoscopic image (PH260) which also resides in the collection. The Stereoscope viewer was purchased later to demonstrate the use of the image. The Stereoscope viewer itself was produced by Oliver Wendell Holmes in New York, USA. He produced the "Stereopticon", as he called it, from around 1860. It was not the first such instrument, examples having been in use since the late 1830s, drawings being viewed before photographs were available. But Holmes' version was handheld, all wooden, and therefore cheaper to produce and retail than others then on the market. This example is difficult to date precisely. The style is that of models produced in the 1880s. But, if it originates from the same period as the selection of images that accompanied it when acquired, then it would have been made in the early 1900s and certainly, no earlier than 1901.
Construction is of walnut wood for its strength and ability to be heat moulded. The image, consisting of two nearly identical images, was slotted into the metal frame and viewed through the twin lenses, giving the user an impression of a "3-D" image. A special stereoscopic camera with two separate lenses mounted side by side was required to produce the twin view. The slight difference in aspects between the two views tricks the eye into imagining a three-dimensional view. The wooden divide between the lenses prevents one eye from seeing the image that the other does. Using this stereoscope, the images of the rugby match at St Helen's in PH260 can be realised as the photographer intended - the viewer appearing to sit in the crowded grandstand.