Ephemera Archive: The View-Master
Necessity may often be the mother of invention, but in the case of the View-Master nothing in particular necessitated its existence. Though View-Masters did go on to find a surprising utilitarian purpose when the US government bought them to train army personnel, the View-Master was made as a mere extension of its creator’s post card business.
I bought the View-Master I still own at an antique market in 2008. At this point View-Masters already felt supremely outdated, but at least an 11 year old in small town Canada, there was no vision of VR headset on the horizon. That is, unless you count the Cinespecs from Phil of the Future, which I did admittedly find pretty cool.
The charm of viewing images alone, surrounded by total darkness, was still palpable in ‘08, but what it had for us to view (stills of cartoons made when those were still hand-drawn; professional travel photos from when those were still shot on film) was undeniably outmoded. The high of the click, click, click as you went through each slide was paired with the low of realizing how quickly you can do a roundtrip of a reel.
The first time I wore a VR headset was the closest I’ve ever felt to the myth of people running from cinemas after seeing footage of an approaching train. I was at an airport with hours to spare and some tech company was running demos. I somehow let the outgoing geek wrangle me into it, despite my predisposition to motion sickness. I guess I’ll do just about anything as long as it’s free.
I strapped on the glorified goggles and did some type of underwater excursion and braved a few minutes before I found myself trapped in a cage surrounded by blood thirsty sharks. I’m a bad swimmer and I was raised in the era of school assemblies on how sharks aren’t quite as mean as they’ve been cracked up to be—the headset came off.
The solitary experience of the View-Master is what makes it so pleasant. It’s impossible to share a glimpse at its reels, at least not at the same time. I probably sound like a luddite, but surrounded by the smoke and mirrors of VR, the isolation of a View-Master feels pretty damn nice. As far as I’m concerned, its limits and its allure are intertwined.