Techotic

April 8, 1953 saw Man in the Dark released at the Globe Theater in New York City, it was the first 3D movie made by a major Hollywood Studio, only 2 days before House of Was was screened. However, the first ever 3D film released was the Power of Love in 1922, but it wasn’t made by a Hollywood Studio.

3-D had already been around for a long time. Charles Wheatstone made the world’s first stereoscopic viewer in 1838, basing his invention on theories of perspective dating to the Renaissance.

Wheatstone’s viewer, built using angled mirrors, contained two separate drawings mounted side by side, one for each eye. Using the stereoscope allowed the images to merge, giving the viewer the illusion of depth.

The same principle was applied much later to 3-D movies. The audience was provided with special anaglyph viewing glasses with different color lenses that created the same illusion of depth as Wheatstone’s stereoscope.

[via Wired]