100 year old spatial images

Over the last year or so, we’ve been doing some experiments with spatial images. A spatial image is a single image file, but has a different picture for your left and right eye. These are commonly used in Virtual Reality, but we’re all probably much more familiar with them from the old View Master toys. The View Master was a plastic set of goggles that you inserted a paper disc into that would rotate around to see a set of seven 3D images! It appeared in 3D because the images for the left and right eye were different images of the same thing using slightly offset cameras. This mimicked what you’re left and right eye would naturally see. 100 years before the View Master, we had Stereoscopes. The earliest was from 01832 and worked in exactly the same way, but instead of a paper disc, they used single cards with printed images. They were the first 3D VR headsets. Luckily for us, there was a crazy for taking these 3D pictures, which means you can find lots of 3D imagery from 100+ years…