Geeky Wednesday: In Stereo

The Muscle Man and I went to our wedding location the other day, since he hadn't seen the interior yet, he was working when my parents and I went location scouting and chose a venue. So we headed over there for a little tour of the chapel, reception hall, and of course the fabulous museum! It has all this amazing old furniture in it, and brides and grooms can get wedding photos there on their big day. =D  I only had my 50mm lens with me so I couldn't get photos of some of the things I wanted, but it was such an experience. We both wound up totally geeking out over the furniture and old technology, which is why I love my Muscle Man so... We're both total geeks when it comes to fabulous modern cutting edge things like Star Wars and conventions, but we'll also go weak in the knees for some 19th century amazingness! Here's some of the fun we saw:

But my absolute geek moment came when I saw the stereoscope sitting on this massive china case. Totally cool, but it didn't have a slide in it, so I was explaining to Muscle Man what the slides looked like and what the device was used for, and the care-taker opens a drawer on the bureau to reveal about 200 slides and grabs the stereoscope, drops a card in and hands it to me! OMG! I get to play with it??

 The slides they had in the museum were fabulous scenic traveling photos, from Jerusalem and Cairo and other far off posh places!  Remember those little Viewmasters you had as a kid? Well this is nothing like it! Ok, similar principle, but these were made for adults, and I've thought they were amazing since even before I went to film school. They were a 3-D scene created by curving the glass in the lenses so it widens the image (as you would see the scene with your eyes if you were there) and also forces your left eye to view only the left image and your right to view only the right image. Very awesome technology, and so cool that it's such a simple principle instead of high tech polarized/non-polarized technology that can cause ghosting if you don't have insanely high quality software to fix it...Eat that Avatar...  I've only ever seen one in person, but I distinctly remember it, I thought it was so cool, and I was nowhere near allowed to touch it =P

courtesy of allears.net

Yup, it's from Disney's Carousel of Progress, which despite what everyone else may say, is quite a charming little show haha...Definitely a must ride at Disney World! In any case, the little boy gets into his dad's stereoscope slides, which based on the dialogue weren't as classy as the scenic places I got to view. A lot of the slides they made then were a bit more adult, with sideshow and adult entertainers that many people wouldn't have been able to see in real life. Sorta like how now-a-days stuff like this is hidden behind glass and travels the country in stuffy museums. But here there was no glass, and the tour guide was as down home as they come, and honored to show off his stuff to young people so interested in old technology.

Muscle Man got his little geek freakout moment too, but I was in such awe I didn't even think to take a picture, not that it would have done it justice... In another corner of the museum there was an old gramophone record player, complete with the big cone shaped speaker, and the care-taker wound it right up and played a fantastic record from way back then! Simply fantastic! The music was so crisp, it's amazing the recording technology they had then... We can't wait to get back there in our fancy wedding attire and take some portraits that will do the scenery justice!