National Museum of Photography

[P3D John Bradley <JB3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I took my family to the National Museum
of Photography in Bradford (England)
yesterday. I visited once before several
years ago , but wasn't looking specifically
at their stereo material. This time one of my
daughters (Jennie,17) is working on
a school project where she is looking at the
development of  stereo systems from a =

design point of view. So we were looking
particularly at their coverage of this area.

We both came away terribly disappointed.

The main "history of photography" section
is the "Kodak Gallery" ,which has reasonable
coverage of early photography , but really
only a passing reference to stereo. One small
display case has a few stereocards and =

a couple of viewers , but no real consideration
of the topic, and no sense of the imporatnce
of stereo in the early days of photography.
Nearby is a badly arranged viewer with a =

misaligned stereocard (with almost no depth)
which one can attempt to view.

Further on is the Kodak camera collection,
which has a case of Kodak stereos, but =

again no commentary.

However around the next corner in the
"Popular photography" section came the
prize display. A model E ViewMaster
viewer is mounted in a perpex box,
with the eyepieces poking out , and a =

lightbox behind. The caption over this
little gem says <attempts to make 3D
popular proved unsuccessful> .
When we tried to look in the viewer
we found it was stuck between pictures,
and with the lever encased in the box
it was impossible to advance !!!

Elsewhere in the "Cinema" gallery, we
found an anaglyph version of "Creature
from the black Lagoon" running , with
one pair of worn out scratched anaglyph
glasses which simply didn't work. Next =

to this was an unwatchable polarised
film clip , again with one pair of useless
glasses.

If we had known nothing about stereo
before we went we would have come
away believing it to be a failed and
useless technology. The museum is
closing down in a few days, to be
completely rebuilt. I hope that in the
meantime the Stereoscopic Society
can help them put on a display that
gives the public some chance to
experience the impact of high quality
stereo photography.

John Bradley
JB3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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