P3D Re First stereo drawings

[abram klooswyk <abram.klooswyk@xxxxxx>]

Dale Walsh wrote (24 Jun 1999, P3d 3364):
>I am curious to know who was the first if it was not Chimenti.

It was Charles Wheatstone, who made the first stereo images 
probably around 1832 (this is likely from a famous paragraph
in: Mayo, Herbert: "Outlines of Human Physiology", London 1833).

He free viewed them first, but he soon invented aids for free 
viewing (crossed eyed and "parallel"), and the (mirror) 
Stereoscope. This was all made public in a reading for the 
(London) Royal Society on June 21th 1838.
(Wheatstone was professor of Experimental Physics at Kings 
College since 1834.)

It is often overlooked, even in many encyclopedias, that he
discovered stereoscopy and invented *stereo imaging*, and not
just invented an instrument for looking at stereopictures,
which of course had to be made in the first place. 
(The invention of a stereoscope was repeated by several others,
first by David Brewster, who published the first lenses 
stereoscope).

Wheatstone also was the first to suggest stereo photography.
The first attempt to make stereo photographs was done by 
Fox Talbot on Wheatstone's request. This is documented by a hand 
written letter from Charles Wheatstone to Henri Fox Talbot 
dated the 15th of December 1840.
It is letter LA 40-89 of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock, Wiltshire, 
England, where I have seen it. It is the oldest document which
mentions making "photographs for the stereoscope".
(I have made an attempt to reconstruct that first stereo photo, 
see "Stereo World" May/June 1991, vol 18 Nr 2, p. 6-11).

Wheatstone's 1838 reading was first printed as:
Charles Wheatstone: "On some remarkable, and hitherto unobserved,
Phenomena of Binocular Vision" , Philosophical Transactions of 
the Royal Society, 1838, vol.128, pp. 371-394. 

A reprint (including all stereo drawings) is in:
Nicolas J. Wade: "Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision",
Academic Press, London, New York etc. 1983.

Abram Klooswyk


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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 3367
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