3D Cameras Are Not A Modern Invention; They’ve Been Around Since The 1880s, And These 3D Pictures of World War I Are Proof.

A few years ago, Chris Hughes, film enthusiast and owner and founder of ‘A Nerd’s World’, was visiting an estate while on a trip to the Niagara Falls, when he stumbled across a rare Jules Richard Verascope stereo camera – one of the first stereoscopic cameras, developed in the late 1880s – which was previously owned by the French army. The camera was in top shape and included the original leather case and the glass slides. It was owned by an elderly man, who was clearing out his camera collection while preparing for retirement.

It was only after Hughes bought the camera that he found two sets of slides inside the camera’s case, which consisted of some invaluable pictures from the First World War, which, when placed in A Nerd’s World’s 3D stereo viewer, resulted in some rather unsettling images – some, because of the gruesome images they hold, but most because of the uncanny nature of the pictures, and of course, the fact that these pictures were taken about a century ago, using technology we now think of as ingenious. Each of the slides was scribbled with “metadata”, comprising the dates and locations where the pictures were taken, along with noted by the photographer.

Here are the pictures Hughes found in the glass slides of the camera, with 3D digital renderings by A Nerd’s World:

The original glass slide:

3D renderings of the same glass slide by A Nerd’s World:

This picture shows soldiers carrying a wounded soldier, while another lies dead in the background: 

A picture of four friends in the trenches, looking straight at the camera. This is Hughes’s favourite:

This picture, clearly showing the sheer destruction of war:

Soldiers gather for a funeral:

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