It might seem implausible, but 3D has been around almost as long as photography. Many of us remember it from playing with Viewmasters as kids, but that technology has actually been around since the Victorian era.

But even after nearly 200 years, the public at large really doesn’t understand how it works. 

“So, we all see 3D because we have two eyes that are set slightly apart and see two different views of the world,” explained 3-D Space curator Eric Kurland. “Our brains are really good at taking those two views and fusing them together into one image with depth. 3D is actually all in your head.”

Kurland is a 3D filmmaker and enthusiast who has been collecting three dimensional ephemera his whole life. That collection multiplied when he acquired the collections from 3-D historian Ray Zone, late filmmaker Dan Symmes, as well as the 3-D Center for Art and Photography.

So what do you do with such a massive collection? Well naturally, Kurland created a mini-museum.

His collection includes everything from 3D cameras, to 19th-century Victorian stereoscopes, to VR Glasses and Viewmasters, to lenticular posters, 3D movies, comics, books, and the latest digital works.

“Digital technologies have made it much easier for people to make their own 3D images,” said Kurland. “Digital cameras have opened up lots of possibilities for 3D photography and digital electronic displays like this looking glass are giving artists all kinds of ways to present 3D content.”

While the future for 3D is certainly exciting, 3D’s past is best described as scintillating. Similar to the VCR and the internet, the advent of 3D brought with it opportunities to appreciate the human form in all its glory.

“This one is called ‘The Kiss,’” said Kurland, showing off a hologram of a woman blowing a kiss.

“As with most most of the Arts and Technology, there is something of a sordid past to it,” he explained. “Going all the way back to the 19th Century, some of the earliest photographers took boudoir photos for their stereo cards and for quite a while, one of the most profitable 3D movies was actually a 1970s pornographic film called The Stewardesses.”

With a wide range of uses such as imaging in the medical field, 3D technology has come a long way.