Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952

1. Stereography Begins

1 Stereography Begins Charles Wheatstone—The Binocular Discovery So often, great scientific breakthroughs seem to be a simple discovery of the obvious. Hidden in plain sight are the mysteries of human perception and stereoscopic vision. The fundamental and powerful fact that we see in 3-D because we have two eyes with binocular vision is just such a discovery . To prove his deduction of this fact, it was necessary for Charles Wheatstone in 1830 to create a device that was to be called the "reflecting mirror stereoscope." The word "stereoscope" is derived from Greek, conjoining the two words skopion and stereo, meaning "to see—solid." Wheatstone's stereoscope , utilizing two centered mirrors at 45 degrees to each eye and reflecting right- and left-eye images, was the first instrument designed to view such images and produce a three-dimensional effect. Binocular vision had been the subject of scientific speculation for centuries . In the third century B.C., Euclid in his treatise on Optics observed that the left and right eyes see slightly different views of a sphere.1 But, as Brian Bowers pointed out in his book Sir Charles Wheatstone, "There is nothing, however, to suggest that Euclid understood the stereoscopic effect achieved with binocular vision."2 In the second century A.D., the physician Galen, with his writing On the Use of the Different Parts of the Human Body, noted that a person standing near a column and observing first with the left eye and then with the right eye will see different portions of the background behind the column: 6 Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film Earliest form of Charles Wheatstone's stereoscope (1833). But there are some things seen by the right eye and some by the left, and hence the position of the magnitude seen will appear to be a property dependent on each of the eyes. . . . Whatever neither eye sees will be entirely invisible to both eyes together, and on this account the object seen by both eyes at once will conceal less than if the eye observing it were alone, whichever eye it is.3 Similarly, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in his Trattato della Pittura (Art of Painting) remarked that a point on a painting plane could never show relief in the same way as a solid object. "Painters often despair of being able to imitate Nature, from observing, that their pictures have not the same relief, nor the same life, as natural objects have in a looking-glass, though they both appear upon a plain surface," wrote da Vinci. "It is impossible that objects in painting should appear with the same relief as those in the looking-glass, unless we look at them with only one eye."4 The first published mention of Wheatstones stereoscope is in the third edition of Herbert Mayos Outlines ofHuman Physiology published in 1833, which refers to "a paper Mr. Wheatstone is about to publish." It states: One of the most remarkable results of Mr. Wheatstone's investigations respecting binocular vision is the following. A solid object being placed so as to be regarded by both eyes, projects a different Stereography Begins 7 perspective figure on each retina; now if these two perspectives be accurately copied on paper, and presented one to each eye so as to fall on corresponding parts, the original solid figure will be apparently reproduced in such a manner that no effort of the imagination can make it appear as a representation on a plane surface.5 Wheatstone first presented his stereoscope to the public before the Royal Society of Great Britain in 1838, where he also presented his historic paper "Contributions to the Physiology of Vision, Part the First: On Some Remarkable, and Hitherto Unobserved, Phenomena of Binocular Vision." With a treatise of 12,000 words, Wheatstone described the stereoscope and claimed as a new fact in his theory of vision the observation that two different pictures are projected on the retinas of the eyes when a single object is seen. He asked, "What would be the visual effect of simultaneously presenting to each eye, instead of the object itself, its projection on a plane surface as it appears to the eye?"6 Included with the 1838 paper were a number of line drawings in the form of stereoscopic pairs. Wheatstone had produced these drawings as proof of his theory, and they were made to be viewed...