Building a Modern View-Master
The View-Master, whose storied 70-year history ended in 2008, just got an awesome modern upgrade: two 1.5-inch LCD screens.
Over at Hacker Consortium, user "tuttle" shows off his hack of the device, which was invented in 1939 and was on its way to a silver screen debut as recently as a year ago (and it still seems to be in the works). Here's what tuttle has to say:Long gone are the days of light shining through celluloid images on a disk... Long gone! Why this little feller here has Two, count them, 2 Colby 1.5 inch digital key chain picture frames lined up with each lens to create a digital stereoscope. Wait there's more don't go. What more you ask? Well this little device actually comes pretty damn close to doing stereoscope really well. It even surprised me!The lever even changes the photos, as it did when you were a kid. And tuttle provides a gallery of (mostly blurry) photos of the construction process.
If you're overwhelmed by the flood of nostalgia unleashed by seeing this, you might want to head over to The View-Master Resource and read an old manual (pdf) or two.
Image above via hackerconsortium.com user tuttle, image to right via vmresource.com.
[Via Hack a Day.]
Niraj Chokshi is a former staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, where he wrote about technology. He is currently freelancing and can be reached through his personal website, NirajC.com.