P3D Re: Viewer help

[Ben Melton <beejay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gabriel Jacob writes,
>David W. Kesner writes,
>>Someone I work with brought in an old viewer they found in an attic
>>and thought was for 3D slides. I would appreciate any and all info.
>>
>>It is called a Tower Pan Ram Slide Viewer (No. 6385) and is made or
>>sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Simpson-Sears Limited.
>>
>>It claims "gives life-like 3-D appearance to individual 35mm
>>or 828 slides"; "automatically enlarges pictures 4 times with
>>brilliance and clarity
>>
>>You place a slide flat on the top of the viewer and it projects
>>through a convex lens on to the back of a two-way mirror at a 45
>>degree angle on to a concave front-surface? mirror. You look through
>>the 45 degree two-way mirror to the image on the concave mirror.
>
>I don't have much info on it other than to say the viewer you
>describe sounds alot like the one I bought from Sam the Hacker
>awhile back. It was a Haminex viewer but didn't use batteries
>but rather is a steal the light type viewer.
>
>>Definitely not 3-D, but it does give a strange new "dimension" to the
>>slide.
>
>Agreed. What I liked about it though was that it worked much better
>than my GAF 2x2 slide viewer with big and thick plastic lens.
>
>Gabriel
>
I have several such viewers.  The earliest are "Shomescopes"
(Show-me-scopes), from about the last turn of the century.  They are
print viewers that fold flat for storage and open a little more than 90
degrees, with three slots in the horizontal base and a concave mirror in
the nearly vertical member.  The print was placed in one of the slots
and viewed through the convex mirror.  It was claimed that this gave a
three-dimensional effect to the picture.  It does, slightly, but not as
noticeable as the more recent ones for slides.

I have several different examples of the 35mm type.  Realist's Realorama
was offered in both lighted and  room-light models.  It was heralded on
the box with "A NEW DIMENSION IN VIEWING! FOR 35mm AND SUPERSLIDES".  On
the side of the box it offered: NEW BRILLIANCE!, NEW DEPTH! and NO
ANNOYING REFLECTIONS!

It does give an impression of 3-dimensional depth in the picture,because
the curvature of the image plane puts the center of the picture farther
away than the edges.

I only have only seen battery-powered ones from Sears, and room-light
models from Hanimex (Hanorama) and K-mart (FOCAL Panoramic).

This, from my viewpoint, is the "any and all info" that was requested,
although I'll bet there's more somewhere.

In a manner of speaking, it was "The poor man's stereoscope".

Ben Melton


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