The 19th Century Craze for Stereoscopic Photography

Stereoscopic photography rapidly became a worldwide craze after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cheap viewers and mass-produced stereographs brought startlingly vivid images within reach of a mass audience, making this the form in which most people first encountered photography – a fact largely ignored in conventional photographic history. 

Like the commercial suppliers of Magic Lantern slides, stereograph publishers offered systematic coverage of many subjects, even claiming that to ‘visit’ remote countries by stereo was better than risking the journey.