PARENTHETICAL, PATHETICAL THOUGHT: 99% of my good play-stuff lives in the garage. All shelves that might have done toy duty, except one, are filled with books and other large items relating to work. When you live alone and see few people regularly -- none of whom make it over to the pad -- you can get sloppy and lose perspective.
Anyway, I found my stereopticon, and had to bring it upstairs. For the few who don't know, a stereopticon uses two images photographed a precise distance apart and two lenses (one for each eye) to produce an amazingly realistic three-dimensional view. They were popular home items up into the early 1920s or so. Mine is, alas, not one of the super-fancy examples, but is an inexpensive type one might have found in any lower-class home circa 1910...
I don't have many slides (as they were called) for it, but I still get a certain amount of amusement from seeing President Wm McKinley and his wife posing...
One may also look at the battleship Maine before the Cubans set a bomb off under her hull in Havana harbor...
But my favorite of the 50 or so slides I have has to be this one. I've cropped it down to a single image for clarity. Meet "Oliver W." the ostrich, about to take his owners out for a ride on their ostrich farm down in Florida, circa 1900...
I'm so easily amused....
Makes me wonder why I'm not amused more often!
14 comments:
Lover of nostalgia :)
I'm so tired I just want to sleep for days, lol.
How did you acquire that nifty item?
Int -- I got the viewer at a garage sale, and the slides at an antique shop. Total outlay, as I recall, was about $15.
I do love nostalgia...a few more toys may appear here from time to time....
I have some really old things from my grandmother. One of them looks something like that. I'll have to check it out!
i just wonder if i would want to be behind an ostrich on a wagon. horse drop their "apples" on roads....but usually anything coming from a feathered animal SQUIRTS. that was interesting and i hope u do it again. thanks
Bud
Bud -- notice the screen on the front of the cart! I'm sure that deflects ostrich effluvium from the cart. Otherwise, the lady wouldn't be wearing white....
Awesome stuff. I have an old box camera I bought at a yard sale. I don't have any idea how to use it, or if I even can, but it's so cool, I had to buy it.
wow! love that nostalgic stuff!
you should really offer it to a museum some day... it would be a big pity if it gets trashed some day by some un-appreciative souls!
looking forward to more interesting "stuff" ;-)
What cool photos!
Boy do I ever get you on the living alone and getting sloppy cuz people don't make it to the pad. I've gotten lazy around my apartment and I REALLY need to clean up. *SIGH*
Gill
Wait until all the failed ostrich farmers see this one!
"Remember The Maine!"...it needed to be said.
-Nullmuse
I love old toys, please post some more Mr Scribs...
Wow, I found one of those stereopticons in the attic here. I had no idea what it was. No slides, though.
cool stuff
This was the grandfather of the Viewmaster of the Fifties. As a kid, one of my souvenirs of places like Glacier NP would be to buy a view master reel of the spot. I even had (and still do since I never throw anything away) a viewmaster projector.
I was somewhat surprised and maybe happy too, to find a Viewmaster reel for sale in Vicksburg when I was there with BG earlier this year. I had no idea they still were sold.
Fin
I can remember looking at stereo pairs in school with lenses in plastic stands. We were looking at aerial photos of ground topogaphy.
Very cool thing to have.
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