P3D Re: Research help needed.

[Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 3:44 AM -0600 on 4/29/98, Dr. George A. Themelis wrote:


|>I am writing a short thesis on the rise and decline of the stereograph 
|>in popularity as a mass medium.... 
|>I am looking for historians or
|>collectors I may interview or written sources that would help me 
|
|Here is my recommendation:
|
|1. Get Darrah's book "The World of Stereographs" either through
|   interlibrary loan or directly from Land Yacht Press, PO Box
|   210262, Nashville TN 37221 (fax order at 615-646-2086) for
|   $24.95 pp.
|

The history is actually pretty interesting. As I recall from Darrah's
book (which I've not read in a while, so I might be off a bit) there were
actually two periods of popularity on views. The first occured just
during after the Civil War, and then tapered off so that you
don't see much from the 1870's/1880's. But then things re-ignited
again around the turn of the century, which is why you see a lot of
Keystone views and so forth with copyright dates of 1895 - 1905 or so.

I need to look at that again sometime this summer.

I was lucky in getting into view collecting just at the end of the
time when they were reasonably affordable. At that time (mid to late
'80s) the viewers were hot items for coffee table decor, but nobody
wanted the views. That's now changed (as you can see from prices on
E-Bay). Fortunately there are still a few dealers  (mostly here :-)
who have prices that are not totally shutting out newcomers. And of
course the NSA conventions are prime hunting grounds! I still have
hopes of running across a "motherload" of views in some estate
auction, but that sort of thing is getting extremely rare (sigh).

THANKS

              Bob Wier
     mailto:wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   11:38 AM Wednesday, April 29, 1998
   Rocky Mountain College, Billings MT.
 keeper of the Photo-3d and Overland-Trails
mailing lists and the USA GPS Waypoint server



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