Key Figures in the History of Stereoscopy and 3D Imaging

Person	Field	Most important contribution
Aristotle	philosophy / perception	Some of the earliest descriptions of issues related to binocular vision.
Claudius Ptolemy	optics	Early experimental studies of retinal correspondence between the two eyes.
Leonardo da Vinci	art / anatomy / optics	He observed that each eye views the world from a different position and can see elements invisible to the other.
Charles Wheatstone	physics / invention	Creator of the first undisputed stereoscope and the scientific theory of stereoscopic depth perception.
William Henry Fox Talbot	photography	He helped combine the newly invented medium of photography with the stereoscope; he produced early photographic pairs for Wheatstone.
David Brewster	optics	He created a compact lenticular stereoscope that enabled 3D to enter widespread use.
Jules Duboscq	optics / industry	He began manufacturing Brewster's devices and helped commercialize the stereoscope.
Thomas Richard Williams	art photography	One of the most outstanding stereographers of the 1850s; portraiture, still life, genre scenes, Scenes in Our Village.
Lady Mary Rosse	photography / science	A pioneer of stereoscopic photography; she documented, among other things, the giant telescope at Birr Castle.
Francis Frith	travel photography	He created extensive series of stereographs of Egypt and the Middle East.
William England	travel photography	One of the LSC's leading photographers, creator of widely distributed views of Europe and North America.
Oliver Wendell Holmes	invention / popularization	Creator of an exceptionally simple handheld stereoscope that became the standard of its era.
Carleton Watkins	landscape photography	Creator of approximately one hundred early stereographs of Yosemite.
Eadweard Muybridge	photography	Before becoming famous for his analysis of motion, he created acclaimed stereoscopic landscapes of the American West.
Timothy H. O'Sullivan	documentary photography	Stereoscopy as a tool for documenting scientific expeditions and the landscape of the American West.
Louis Ducos du Hauron	photography / optics	One of the fathers of the practical anaglyph.
Elmer and Bert Underwood	photography / publishing	They transformed stereoscopic photography into a powerful international educational and information industry.
Benneville Lloyd Singley	photography / publishing	Founder of the Keystone View Company—one of the largest archives and producers of stereographs.
Jules Richard	camera design	Vérascope and Taxiphote; an enormous influence on European stereoscopic photography at the turn of the 20th century.
William Gruber	photography / invention	Creator of the View-Master concept; together with Harold Graves, he brought it to market.
Seton Rochwite	photography / camera design	The Stereo Realist and the boom in amateur stereoscopic photography in the 1950s.
Norman McLaren	film / experimental art	One of the pioneers of artistic stereoscopic cinema in the mid-20th century.
Salvador Dalí	painting	He created actual pairs of stereoscopic paintings as well as anaglyph works; he was one of the few major painters to consistently explore stereopsis.
Colin Low, Tony Ianzelo, Ernest McNabb	film	The team behind the groundbreaking Transitions—the first IMAX 3D film.
James Cameron and Vince Pace	cinema / film technology	Development of the Fusion system and highly deliberate use of stereoscopic geometry in Avatar.
Brian May	photography / collecting / popularization	One of today's most important advocates of stereoscopy: he revived the London Stereoscopic Company, contributes to research on T.R. Williams, and designed the modern OWL stereoscope.

People Without Whom the History of Stereoscopy Would Have Been Different

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