Film Cameras: A brief history, and stellar images created with it

STEREO KODAK Model 1  | 1917-1925 
This folding camera created stereographs (3D pictures) that were a rage. It had two identical lenses, separated by a distance similar to the distance between our eyes. Two photos would be taken simultaneously, mounted on a card, and viewed through a stereo viewer, which would cause the two images to fuse into one, having all the depth of the original scene. It’s actually our brain assembling the two images—each with a slightly different perspective from the other—into a three dimensional view, in a manner similar to our natural vision. The stereograph provided virtual voyaging for the emerging middle-class, peering at the canyons of the West, Egyptian camels, exotic Parisian dancers, and exploding volcanoes. Charlie Chaplin was casting about unsuccessfully for an idea for his next film, when he peered at stereographs of the Yukon. “This was a wonderful theme,” he realised, and conceived the idea of his next hit, The Gold Rush.