My granddad is a 3D nerd

Throughout his life my granddad has always been very fond of photography and until this day he tries to keep up with current developments in digital photography. Back in his early days he had one of the first cameras and even one of the first stereocameras. It’s safe to say he was an early adopter of the 3D technology back in the fifties. This makes for interesting photos and material.

He has this ancient case containing two frame slides with pictures he took during his lifetime. Even pictures of my grand grand father. Maybe I won’t just acquire stereovision, but I’ll be able to see dead relatives in 3D. That’s something I litterly can’t conceive yet…

 

 I also found one of these is his house. A Stereo Viewer made by Underwood & Underwood of New York. Including a wooden handle and a stereoscopic picture. The viewer has two lenses at a set distance in an aluminum frame. The pictures can be moved horizontally in order to focus them. These devises became popular in the middle of the 19th century. This is a Holmes type stereoscope, named after its inventor, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1860). 

It strikes me as terribly ironic that my granddad was so engaged with stereophotography while I have no idea of what it must feel like. I spent a lot of time with him last year and he told me that when I developed the squint as a child, it had crossed his mind back then ‘that some kind of intensive training might correct it’. Of course, it was just a hunch he had and he must have thought ‘Who am I to contradict doctors and parents alike?’. He didn’t have any real knowledge about the subject of vision, just a bunch of stereoscopes and common sense. Something that is in short supply apparently.  Irony, so much irony…

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