First photo in 3DThis page was last revised on 2009-11-22. NB Full references to printed sources may be found at the foot of this page.
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First 3d photo |
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Henry Collen (1797-1879) made a stereoscopic calotype portrait of Charles Babbage in August 1841. This is now lost. The Babbage portrait may be one of those referred to by Charles Wheatstone, writing in 1852:
Collen himself recalled:
2 stereoscopic self-portraits by Dr John Adamson (1810-70) of the University of St Andrews were presented by Sir David Brewster on 26 Mar 1849; the process is not stated, but was apparently calotype. No image has yet been located. However the University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive has an interesting stereographic portrait, said to be c. 1845, and inscribed on the front free endpaper is "Dr Lyon Playfair from JA" (John Adamson); a handwritten note below states '1st stereo portrait in the history of the stereoscope - Sir D Brewster of Dr Adamson'. 360° cylindrical panoramas: In 1857 M. Garella of England made and patented a rotating photographic instrument with up to 360° field of view, using the same principle as the Cirkut camera of 1904. [Panoramic Photo] On 15 September 1891 Louis Ducos du Hauron submitted his patent for the first printed anaglyphs - photographs consisting of two negatives (one in blue or green, the other in red) printed on the same sheet of paper to form a 3D photograph. [Pellerin (2000) pp121-3]. An anaglyph by Ducos du Hauron, dating from 1891-3, is reproduced on p132 of Reynaud, Tambrun and Timby. In the 1970s Stephen Gibson patented his "Deep Vision" anaglyphic system using cyan instead of green filters. These colours cover the entire visible spectrum, providing more natural colour. In 1920 Louis Lumière invented a process he called 'photostéréosynthèse', which involved taking six or seven shots of a subject, each focusing on a very thin plane with very little depth of field. Prints of each image on glass are then viewed sandwiched. Viewed along the sagittal (shooting) axis, perpendicular to the planes of the images, the 3D impression was said to be 'absolutely striking'. Examples are presented (in 2D) in Frizot (2000a) pp145-9]. See also Garnet Hertz's Photostereosynthesis Camera Controller. Parallax barrier, lenticular and integral photographic processes are all autostereoscopic - meaning they can be viewed without special glasses or a viewer. Frederick Ives (1856-1937) patented his 'parallax stereogram' process on 25 September 1902. Using line screen barriers rather than the later linear lenticulars, it was the first autostereoscopic process. After the grant of the patent the Scientific Shop in Chicago published five of his parallax stereograms as stock images. Typical of these was his image of 'The Brigand', depicting a cowboy pointing a revolver directly at the viewer; this image is reproduced in 2D in Zone (2007). See also Zone's Multi-Phase Images. Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921), at the Sorbonne, first proposed integral imaging in 1908. Integral imaging uses tiny spherical lenses, in a fly's eye lens array, rather than linear lenticulars, allowing for parallax in all directions. The first successful experiment in integral photography was by P.P. Sokolov of Moscow State University, in 1911. [History of Integral Imaging] But later development of the simpler linear lenticulars, with only horizontal parallax, was to prove more commercially successful. [Roberts; and Frizot (2000b)] Edwin Land's polarising sheet film was first used for the projection of still stereographic images of sculpture in March 1934. The vectograph was invented by Joseph Mahler (c. 1900-81) for the Polaroid Corporation, and uses polarized glasses to view a 3D photographic image embedded in a plastic sheet. It was announced in 1938 and shown at the New York World's Fair the following year. [Zone (2007), A Brief Timeline of Polaroid] One of the most seen vectographs was the large wall vectograph print advertisement that was displayed in Grand Central Station, New York, during the 1940s, of a candy roll of Life Savers. It was taken by Charles Debois Hodges who worked for Keystone using a Stereo Graphic camera before its processing by Polaroid. Image at Dick Bolt on vectographs. Since the early 40s one of the most familiar vectographs has been that of the Titmus Fly, used in eye-testing. An anaglyphic version appears here. In 1953 Edwin Land (1909-91) demonstrated three-colour Vectograph images formed by successive transfer of cyan, magenta, and yellow dichroic dyes from gelatin relief images to Vectograph sheet. [Digital Tiger] The first transmission hologram was made by Dennis Gabor (1900-1979) in 1947, using filtered light. The first 3D transmission hologram using laser light was made on 19 December 1963 by Emmett Leith (1927-2005) and Juris Upatnieks (b. 1936), of the University of Michigan. It showed "partial reconstruction of several three-dimensional objects"; but Leith was adamant that "there wasn't a first hologram; it was an evolutionary process". Their first high quality hologram of a three dimensional object was of a toy train, made three days before Christmas 1963. [Johnston 2006: 109-10; Holophile includes a photo of an early (c. 1964) hologram of the toy train and a ceramic bird.] 360° cylindrical holograms were first described in print in 1965, in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and had certainly been produced by early 1967. [Johnston 2006: 204-5] The 1967 World Book Encyclopedia Science Yearbook contained what is arguably the first mass-distributed hologram. This was a 4"x3" transmission view of chess pieces on a chess board. An article describing the production of the hologram and basic information about the history of holography accompanied it. A .05 watt Helium-Neon laser was used on a nine-ton granite table in a 30-second exposure to make the original. All copies were then produced from this original. Holograms can be created without visible light. Ultraviolet, X-ray, and sound waves can all be used to create them. Microwave holography is being used in astronomy to record radio waves from deep space. Acoustical holography can look through solid objects to record images, much as ultrasound is used to generate images of a foetus within a womb. Holograms made with short waves such as X-rays can create images of particles as small as molecules and atoms. Spherical VR panoramas: Omnidirectional digital cameras such as the Panoscan can film multi-row panoramas, including cubic or spherical panoramas that include top and bottom views. They are playable by means of Apple's QuickTime file format. Photosynth is a software application from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern recognition components compare portions of images to create points, which are then compared to convert the image into a model. Users are able to view and generate their own models using a software tool downloadable from the Photosynth website. The application's capabilities include being able to walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle; zoom in or out of a photo; see where pictures were taken in relation to one another; smoothly change viewing angle between nearby photos; and smoothly zoom in and out of high-resolution photos. In use the experience is that of encountering associated 2-dimensional planes arranged naturalistically in VR 3-dimensional space. Photosynth was first previewed from November 2006, and officially released to the public on 20 August 2008. A notable recent photosynth aggregates 600+ photos of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, 20 January 2009. See Photosynth. 3D scanning analyzes a real-world object or environment to collect data on its shape and appearance. The collected data can then be used to construct digital, three dimensional models. A number of different technologies can be used. The earliest application was in Greg Turk and Mark Levoy's 3D scan of the 'Stanford Bunny', successfully created around Easter 1994. [The Stanford Bunny] In 1996 a 3D scan of a 'Happy Buddha' statuette was recreated in 3D hardcopy, on behalf of Brian Curless and Mark Levoy, by a process of stereolithography. [Computer model and 3D fax of Happy Buddha] VR object movies: In contrast to panoramas, which are captured from one location looking out at various angles, objects are captured from many locations pointing in toward the same central object. The simplest type of object VRs to capture are single row, typically captured around the equator of an object. This is normally facilitated by a rotating turntable. The object is placed on the turntable, and photographed at equal angular increments (usually 10°) from a camera mounted on a tripod. Capturing a multi-row object movie requires a more elaborate setup for capturing images, because the camera must be tilted above and below the equator of the object at several tilt angles. [QuickTime VR] [NB Some of Muybridge's photography for Animal Locomotion included images taken simultaneously by six cameras placed in a semicircle around the subject, the camera shutters being triggered at the same time. The results could presumably be assembled as an proto-VR object movie, or perhaps as a lenticular, though it is not known whether this has ever been done. See Freeze Frame, for example.] Interactive 360º Light Field Display: The Graphics Lab at the University of Southern California has designed an easily reproducible, low-cost 3D display system for displaying 3D objects in 3D. The display is autostereoscopic, omnidirectional, and interactive. The system works by projecting high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning mirror. As the mirror turns, it reflects a different and accurate image to each potential viewer. The system's rendering algorithm can recreate both virtual and real scenes with correct occlusion, horizontal and vertical perspective, and shading. See USC Graphics Lab. This appears to be one example of swept-volume display, first described in 1966. It therefore comes under the category of volumetric displays, of which there are a number of types. These were first postulated in 1912.
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First 3D photo of a person, and first 3D portrait photo of a person |
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Henry Collen (1797-1879) made a stereoscopic calotype portrait of Charles Babbage in early 1841. This is now lost. 2 stereoscopic self-portraits by Dr John Adamson (1810-70) of the University of St Andrews were presented by Sir David Brewster on 26 Mar 1849; the process is not stated, but was apparently calotype. No image has yet been located. However the University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive has an interesting stereographic portrait, said to be c. 1845, and inscribed on the front free endpaper is "Dr Lyon Playfair from JA" (John Adamson); a handwritten note below states '1st stereo portrait in the history of the stereoscope - Sir D Brewster of Dr Adamson'. Frederick Ives's parallax stereogram of 'The Brigand', 1903, is the earliest autostereoscopic photo of a human so far located. This image is reproduced in 2D in Zone (2007). The first hologram of a person (himself) was made by Lawrence D. Siebert of the Conductron Corporation on 31 October 1967, using a pulsed laser of his design. [Johnston 2006: 207 (a photograph of this image is on p. 208); Bjelkhagen.] Examples of spherical VR panoramic portraits, of male and female artists, may be found at Bohonus. The portraits - by Seattle photographer Bradford Bohonus - included spoken commentaries by the artists. They date from no earlier than 1996.
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First 3D photo of a woman |
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Insufficient information yet located. The National Portrait Gallery has a stereo daguerreotype of Sir Charles Wheatstone and his family, c. 1851-2, which includes his wife Emma and daughter Florence Caroline.
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First 3D portrait photo of a woman |
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Insufficient information yet located. A stereo daguerreotype of an elderly woman, believed to be the mother or mother-in-law of Antoine Claudet, taken at Claudet's studio around 1853, appears here. A 1920s photostéréosynthèse of Yvonne Lumière by Louis Lumière appears (in 2D) in Frizot (2000a), p149]. Lloyd Cross created a multiplex hologram of a woman called Lesley ____ in the summer of 1972, based on 35 colour slides taken over 15 minutes. [Holophile's 'Story of Multiplex'] Roger de Montebello's integral photographic portrait of a woman appears in the History of Integral Imaging. It was made in 1977 by his patented 'Integram' system.
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Earliest-born person to be photographed in 3D |
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Insufficient information available. A stereo daguerreotype of an elderly woman, believed to be the mother or mother-in-law of Antoine Claudet, taken at Claudet's studio around 1853, appears here. As Claudet was born in 1797, she was probably born in the 1770s. A 1920s photostéréosynthèse of Yvonne Lumière by Louis Lumière appears (in 2D) in Frizot (2000a), p149]. The earliest-born human being to be the subject of a lenticular portrait may have been the male subject of Ives's 'The Brigand' (see above), who appears to have been born no later than the 1870s. Probably the earliest-born human being to be the subject of a holographic portrait was Henry Allingham (1896-2009). Both holographic and lenticular portraits of him were made at Spatial Imaging's London studio in December 2005. See Spatial Imaging Portraits and Manufacturing Talk.
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Earliest-born person of the opposite sex to be photographed in 3D |
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Insufficient information yet located. It seems unlikely that Charles Babbage (1791-1871), subject of the earliest stereoscopic portrait photo, was the earliest-born, as he would have been aged about 50 only.
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© 2009 Benjamin S. Beck |
If you know of any earlier examples, please contact me.
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