Devices of Wonder: From the world in a box to images on a screen by Barbara
Maria Stafford, Frances Terpak and Isotta Poggi, Getty Publications, 拢30,
ISBN 0892365900
IT WAS the English physicist Charles Wheatstone who demonstrated that humans
experience the world in three dimensions because the brain combines the two
slightly different images received by each eye. That was in 1838, and his
Stereoscope, using mirrors, was cumbersome and unsuited to photography. But soon
others were developing compact and cheap photographic stereoscopes: within three
months of Queen Victoria admiring stereoscopic daguerreotypes at the 1851 Great
Exhibition, a quarter of a million images had been sold.
By the end of the 19th century, stereoscopic cameras accompanied explorers,
missionaries and the French Army around the world. One company kept over 100,000
different stereoscopic images in stock for sale to the public.
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The stereoscope is just one of the fascinating and once-popular Devices
of Wonder in this record of an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles. Wonder cabinets, faceted mirrors, pantographs, magic lanterns and
automata seem less remarkable given the image manipulating capability of the
modern computer. But they retain their power to intrigue. Anyone who is
fascinated by visual images and by how they may be manipulated to extraordinary
effect will thoroughly enjoy this book.