I’ve been collecting stereo views and viewers for only a few years and have found quite a few different British-made viewers and views (a reminder for anyone under 40 here that yes, we really did used to make things in this country!). When I went looking around on the internet for more information, while there’s quite a lot of information about American or French viewers and formats in particular, there’s not a lot of dedicated coverage to those coming from Great Britain.
Stereoscopy was actually invented here by Sir Charles Wheatstone in the 1830s so a site for just British stereoscopes and views seemed overdue.
This site may not end up going quite as far back as Wheatstone's time time to start with but it occurred to me that there are plenty of different stereoscope formats from the UK in the 20th century which were well known for a while but have since fallen into obscurity as the popularity of stereoscopy as a hobby ebbed and flowed over the years. As a result, much now is unremembered or hard to find.
British stereoscopy covered everything other countries did - from scenic, travel and special interest views; views made for commercial purposes (company promotion, for example); hand drawn cartoons for kids… but also hundreds of collectable cigarette cards; giveaways with cereal - and all of these appeared in different formats with different viewers. Everything from this…
Stereoscopy was actually invented here by Sir Charles Wheatstone in the 1830s so a site for just British stereoscopes and views seemed overdue.
This site may not end up going quite as far back as Wheatstone's time time to start with but it occurred to me that there are plenty of different stereoscope formats from the UK in the 20th century which were well known for a while but have since fallen into obscurity as the popularity of stereoscopy as a hobby ebbed and flowed over the years. As a result, much now is unremembered or hard to find.
British stereoscopy covered everything other countries did - from scenic, travel and special interest views; views made for commercial purposes (company promotion, for example); hand drawn cartoons for kids… but also hundreds of collectable cigarette cards; giveaways with cereal - and all of these appeared in different formats with different viewers. Everything from this…
Without the views, stereo viewers (or stereoscopes) are just nice looking ornaments, of course. I have been fortunate to find everything from drawings to 35mm colour kodachrome stereo slides, from film rolls to prints. So what I’d like to do on the site is focus more (sorry, another bad pun) on the stereo views associated with all these formats…scanned, digitised, cleaned a little and presented to you so you can enjoy views you may have never seen, from formats you’ve not perhaps been able to source (or even, perhaps, heard of, in some cases). I will try and tell you what I know about the formats and refer you to other sites for further reading where I can.
For those new to the hobby and who don’t know how to view them, I’ll also put an article together on how you can view these.
So whether it be Vistascreen, Sightseer, Coronet, Camerascope, True-View (yes, I spelled that one right), Merit or Sterolist (and yes, I spelled that one correctly too) - or anything else we come across along the way - my hope is you will find plenty of period stereo views to enjoy here over the coming months and years, along with some information on the formats behind them.
For me, stereo views are a little like time travel; like stepping into a scene in the past. If this sounds your cup of tea - why not subscribe to the accompanying Substack (***to be added***-) this will let you know about, and give you a shorter version of, all new additions to this site direct into your email - with a link to the full articles here. Alternatively, just bookmark or add this site to your favourites and stop by sometime!
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