Greetings family, friends, and Neighbors. Do you recall ever having a "View-Master"? Today's Snippet is about the classic children's toy with an interesting history..........Bill
Historic Snippets
SAWYER”S VIEW-MASTER
The illusion of depth has always been a fascination of mine beginning in the early 1950’s with 3-D comic books with the detachable cardboard glasses. I could sit for hours reading and viewing the exploits of Mighty Mouse and other familiar cartoon characters and trying to duplicate the 3-D effect by using blue and red colored pencils on my own drawings. My first stops on family visits to Disneyland in the 1950’s and 60’s was at the Art Corner, Book Store and Emporium seeking View-Master reels of the parks attractions. In later years I built my own 3-D cameras using inexpensive disposable cameras and cardboard stereo cards, and began collecting vintage stereo cards and assembling a modest
library of three dimensional Yosemite, Disney, and Railroad books and magazines.
Three dimensional photography is as old as photography itself, dating back to 1851 with stereo photographs displayed at the World Exhibition in London. Mathew Brady chronicled the America’s Civil War and by the turn of the century professionally produced photos of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and the wonders of Yosemite were being viewed in households on hand held wooden stereoscopes. Sensing an opportunity in 1919, Portland, Oregon Owl Drug pharmacist Edwin Mayer invested in the Sawyer’ Photo Finishing
Service and in the following decade grew the business to include the sale of photographic greeting cards, photo albums, and became the nation’s largest producer of scenic photographic postcards.
Mayer’s growing enterprise brought in new partners including William Gruber who had developed a device that mounted fourteen pairs of tiny pieces of 16mm Kodachrome color transparency film on to heavy circular paper stock reels. The simulation of depth perception was achieved when viewed
simultaneously by each eye in a specially designed hand held plastic and Bakelite viewer. The Sawyer’s View-Master was introduced at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair displaying three dimensional scenes of Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon Sawyer’s produced thousands of scenic titles for nearly three decades, however the company was sold to GAF in 1966 who began focusing on more child friendly subjects including cartoon characters, popular toys, and TV shows. View-Master changed hands through sales and mergers beginning in 1981passing through Ideal Toy Company, Tyco Toys, Mattel’s Fisher-Price imprint, and a short lived collaboration with Google to produce a
View-Master Virtual Reality viewing device. In nearly ninety years since Mayer and Gruber introduced their intended replacement for scenic postcards there have been some twenty five viewer models,
thousands of titles, and more than one and a half billion reels produced.
Regardless of the viewing device; cardboard glasses, vintage stereoscope, or classic View-Master, 3-D has been a temporarily escape from the worries of the moment and into the immersive depth of a Sierra railroad snow shed, a stroll through a Gettysburg battlefield, or the view of a waterfall from a Yosemite meadow.
-Bill 3/25