Stereoview illustrated books

In the 1850s the first books illustrated with stereoviews appeared. The stereoviews in these books could be viewed with specialised book stereoscopes, of which the Mirror Stereoscope produced by Smith, Beck & Beck is the best known.

The first example appeared in 1858 under the title Tenerife, An Astronomers Experiment by Charles Piazzi Smyth. A notable example is Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia. Illustrated by One Hundred Stereoscopic Photographs (1862), which contains 100 stereoviews made by Francis Frith depicting monuments of Ancient Egypt.

The paper stereoviews were manually pasted onto the pages of the book. This labour-intensive process limited the size of the print runs.

Related items:
Achromatic Mirror Stereoscope  Book stereoscope  Frith, Francis

Further reading: