Rev George Maynard of UCC courtesy of UCC Archives
Toronto. A few years before successful photographic processes were formally announced, Reverend Maynard wrote his first letter letter on stereo vision to the Toronto Royal Standard. It was reproduced in issue 18-3 courtesy of Dr Robert Wilson of the PHSC.
Bob accompanies the letter and images with an article on the topic. He begins, “While the basic knowledge of binocular vision had existed since about 280 BC, it was not until 1832 when Sir Charles Wheatstone produced the first stereoscopic drawings and had an optical device (a stereoscope) produced in order to view these drawings.
“Wheatstone presented this work to the Royal Society in 1838. In 1840, shortly after William Henry Fox Talbot revealed his new photographic process, Wheatstone arranged for Talbot to make the first stereoscopic photographs using Talbot’s new calotype process.
“Sir David Brewster was a contemporary of Wheatstone and was also involved early in stereoscopic history, designing his own stereoscope in the 1840’s. In the 1850’s, Brewster and Wheatstone had an ongoing correspondence in The Times (of London). In these letters, reference was made to two letters on stereo vision which appeared in Toronto newspapers.
“The first of these Toronto items appeared in the Toronto Royal Standard on November 28, 1836 and was signed ‘Theophilus’. Twenty years later, the second letter appeared in the Toronto Times and the author identified himself as being Mr. George Maynard [a very controversial mathematics master at UCC]. Maynard sent a copy of this second letter to Sir David Brewster.
“Brewster referred to Maynard’s Toronto Times letter in his own correspondence with Wheatstone in The Times (of London) of November 5, 1856. In the Toronto Times letter, Maynard expressed the hope that the comments in his original 1836 letter would prove to be the first on stereo vision. While it turned out that it was not the first on the subject, the 1836 letter was indeed an early discussion, being published two years before Wheatstone’s paper to the Royal Society. …”
The rest of the article is available on the members-only DVD. And to save you the headache of finding elsewhere how to join us and get the DVD with the issue 18-3 pdf file, above (and at right) are helpful means for you to join the PHSC and read Dr Wilson’s entire article. Any Questions, just give Lilianne a shout at member@phsc.ca.
