Recently, as the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster rolled around, I sped up my search for ‘accidental’ stereos of anything to do with the great ship, which had commenced when we found out that my wife had a relative who perished on that fateful maiden voyage. Thinking I’d be lucky to find a mere few, I was stunned every time a new one literally popped out of my search. In all, I found thirty 3D images of the life of Titanic, and these are not CG, nor are they converted from 2D.   Visit my site   RealTitanic3D.com   for more project info.

After viewing a documentary on Iwo Jima describing how there was a film cameraman standing next to Joe Rosenthal when he took his famous photograph of the flag-raising, it struck me that if he was rolling his footage at the same time, I could possibly find an ‘accidental’ stereo image of the moment. A quick Google search showed me that someone had already thought of that; he does a good job of giving you the full story & images here: Greg Williams’ site

I like to call my collection of old stereoview cards “tickets to a time machine”. When looking through a stereo viewer at these 3D views from a time gone by, you really feel like you’re in the scene! You can find them now in antique shops, estate sales, and ebay. Here’s what a typical card looks like – this one is of Bok Tower here in Central Florida, built in 1929. It boasts a carillon, a pipe organ-like instrument with giant bells, and it is still played today.

I love this view of a farmer completing the circle of life, as this lucky feline gets a fresh treat direct from the cow. I thought at first that he might be stuffed (literally), but a series of the same view convinced me otherwise, because both animals moved between photographs.

This is a scan I made of a very old glass slide (from 1897), most likely taken by a single camera, as evidenced by the shadows falling on the street moving between exposures, as well as a slightly miniaturized hyperstereo effect caused by a wider-than-normal interocular.

I love this idyllic scene of a family picnic in the gardens of old Japan, right around the turn of the century… so relaxing, and you can practically smell the cherry blossoms in bloom!

Above, the SS Arabic sits at the dock in Southampton, England before yet another voyage across the Atlantic to America. On one of these trips, the grandfather of renowned modern Irish musician John Doyle was coming across when they were torpedoed by a U-boat. They sank quickly, and he had to literally fight his way onto a lifeboat. John wrote a song about it, which I heard him sing on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion”. Later I found this stereocard, scanned it, zoomed in on the ship’s name on the side, and sure enough…

Here’s a really old view of a marketplace in Germany. Looking into other people’s faces, especially in 3D, can really transport you back across the years like a time machine!