I have a confession to make.
I still have a Viewmaster.
Actually that's not quite true. What I really mean is that I have a Viewmaster again. I bought it about a year ago to look at a set of Alice in Wonderland Viewmaster slides that I had acquired.
Now there surely can't be anybody who isn't familiar with this particular item. It's a slightly more recent equivalent of a toy that's been around for a long time, a stereoscopic viewer.
They may look a little different (personally I think the Victorian wooden one is far more elegant) but they are essentially exactly the same thing. Separate views, though very similar views are presented to each eye and the brain does the rest, extrapolating a 3D effect from two 2D pictures.
There were, and there still are, all sorts of Viewmaster slides, from pictures of deep under the sea to pictures of panoramic mountain scenes, from Biblical Scenes to Mickey Mouse, from historical recreations to wildlife photography.
I remember that not only did I have piles and piles of the slides and a viewer I had a projector and when we were little we would set it up in the living room and pin a sheet to the wall, focus with the moveable lens at the front and show our slides for hours on end. It didn't matter that we'd seen them all a thousand times, we were always happy to see them again.
Where they all went to is one of life's mysteries. Where does anything go to? Where are all the lost things of our childhoods?
Of course I remember some specific reels. There was a great one that showed some of the weirder and more mysterious creatures of the deep. Brightly coloured, marvellously shaped spiny-finned monsters that I had never seen and never hoped to see. In 3D it was incredible, well it was to someone of that age and at that time, and blown up to a 2D five-foot across by the projector it was marvellous for different reasons. You could go up close and examine details that were never really visible on the smaller 3D viewer.
I remember having some pictures of the Himalayas and the Alps, places that I couldn't dream of seeing. Perhaps they were in part the root of my love of travel.
Bizarrely the one I remember most was a set of photographs of Paris. They were so dated. The clothes of the people and the styles of the vehicles were old-fashioned even then. Projected they were more mysterious than ever. They were pictures of the city in which people had been frozen in a single moment, held fast for eternity halfway to their destinations. I would make up stories about who these people were and what they were doing. A man in a blue suit and a hat stood on the left with his back to me. A smartly dressed woman was walking into the frame from the right. Less distinct figures were in the shadows of the buildings in the background. I studied the pictures for so long that some of them are indelibly stamped in my memory.
It was one of my favourite toys. As with all these other nostalgia trips of mine I may now seek out, perhaps on ebay, some random piles of reels to view again. Who knows, I may come across that set of Paris or those fish.
I still have a Viewmaster.
Actually that's not quite true. What I really mean is that I have a Viewmaster again. I bought it about a year ago to look at a set of Alice in Wonderland Viewmaster slides that I had acquired.Now there surely can't be anybody who isn't familiar with this particular item. It's a slightly more recent equivalent of a toy that's been around for a long time, a stereoscopic viewer.
They may look a little different (personally I think the Victorian wooden one is far more elegant) but they are essentially exactly the same thing. Separate views, though very similar views are presented to each eye and the brain does the rest, extrapolating a 3D effect from two 2D pictures.
There were, and there still are, all sorts of Viewmaster slides, from pictures of deep under the sea to pictures of panoramic mountain scenes, from Biblical Scenes to Mickey Mouse, from historical recreations to wildlife photography.
I remember that not only did I have piles and piles of the slides and a viewer I had a projector and when we were little we would set it up in the living room and pin a sheet to the wall, focus with the moveable lens at the front and show our slides for hours on end. It didn't matter that we'd seen them all a thousand times, we were always happy to see them again.
Where they all went to is one of life's mysteries. Where does anything go to? Where are all the lost things of our childhoods?
Of course I remember some specific reels. There was a great one that showed some of the weirder and more mysterious creatures of the deep. Brightly coloured, marvellously shaped spiny-finned monsters that I had never seen and never hoped to see. In 3D it was incredible, well it was to someone of that age and at that time, and blown up to a 2D five-foot across by the projector it was marvellous for different reasons. You could go up close and examine details that were never really visible on the smaller 3D viewer.
I remember having some pictures of the Himalayas and the Alps, places that I couldn't dream of seeing. Perhaps they were in part the root of my love of travel.
Bizarrely the one I remember most was a set of photographs of Paris. They were so dated. The clothes of the people and the styles of the vehicles were old-fashioned even then. Projected they were more mysterious than ever. They were pictures of the city in which people had been frozen in a single moment, held fast for eternity halfway to their destinations. I would make up stories about who these people were and what they were doing. A man in a blue suit and a hat stood on the left with his back to me. A smartly dressed woman was walking into the frame from the right. Less distinct figures were in the shadows of the buildings in the background. I studied the pictures for so long that some of them are indelibly stamped in my memory.
It was one of my favourite toys. As with all these other nostalgia trips of mine I may now seek out, perhaps on ebay, some random piles of reels to view again. Who knows, I may come across that set of Paris or those fish.
1 comment:
I was always fascinated by the viewmaster when I was a kid. I enjoyed looking at the bright pictures, but I can't say that I specifically remember any of them like you can. My husband, Mike, has a collection of old photos (amber types and daguerotypes, etc) and also some old stereopticon slides. They are pretty cool.
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