Re: Viewmaster

[P3D Michael Kersenbrock <michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What a load of Rubbish !!!!
> 
> Is " survival" the only essential ingredient to stereo photography? Tyco is
> a toy company not a 3-D company at all, and I couldn't give a damn how large

That's a good observation.  It's not a 3D company.  Not a photography company.
Not a 2-D company.  It's a company that uses 3D technology in some of
its products.  Disney also uses some 3D technology in some of its products.
So do others.  Is a company not allowed to use 3D technology unless they're
a 3D evangelist ?

> it is. Where are the new viewmaster cameras ? Are their world tour views
> still around? No. Viewmaster, or whatever they're called now, has done
> NOTHING to improve serious stereo photography since they discontinued the
> Mark IV camera in the early seventies.
~
>I wish they HAD gone under with the rest of them.


Are you saying that if Viewmaster didn't survive at all that it'd be better 
that way in your view?  Survival doesn't count.  A company
should go down to an honorable death rather than going where the public leads
them? 

Would it *really* be best if they never existed at all?

> If these guys were serious about promoting 3D, they'd have more serious

Do you think they should be an evangelistic 3D company with promotion of 3D
as it's place in life rather than one just trying to make a profit for it's 
owners and jobs for it's employees (terrible thing to do, I know)?

If a company dies, how *then* does it help it's "cause"?  

Is it not better to survive to fight the battle again another day?

Mike K.


P.S.-  I think that the bulk of viewmaster's old selling grounds is gone forever.
       Like the holmes cards before it, viewmaster reels were a passport to places
       far away and to things one would never see otherwise.  Nowdays, one can go
       anywhere in the world in a matter of hours and *not* take a king's
       ransom -- just a piece of plastic offered almost daily by the mailman.  One
       can see *live* reports anywhere in the world almost instantly by turning on
       one's TV set.  One can communicate world wide by clicking a mouse button
       onto a web site page.  Instant easy pictures -- and world wide.  The world
       is different now.  Certainly there are niches that viewmaster could expand
       and those have been mentioned a lot in photo-3D.  But the mainstream bulk
       marketplace that they used to have is gone.  Ham radio, IMHO, has suffered
       for the same reasons (I've been a licensed ham for more than 30 years). Seeing
       or communicating "across the ocean" to a foreign land or city across the
       country is now a daily experience rather than something extra special
       and rare.







------------------------------