View-Master Reel

View-Master was launched at the 1939 New York World’s Fair as a combination of plastic viewer and round slide reels that combined 14 pictures into seven stereo pairs. Many of the reels were photos of travel sites or popular children’s characters, but with a special View-Master 3D camera and film cutter it was possible to make your own “Personal Reel.” Over the last 80 years at least 1.5 billion reels have been sold and every reel works in every viewer, which is more than can be said about almost every other photographic format in this book. View-Master viewers and reels can still be purchased today. 

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