Hiking Through the New Hampshire Woods

Yesterday I took advantage of a truly gorgeous and cool autumn day and headed north with my dad to hike up Mount Chocorua in Albany, NH, or at least attempt it. Well, we fought the mountain and the mountain won, but we still had a great time and saw some truly brilliant fall foliage along the way. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the White Mountains have beeen a major American toursit attraction, so it's not surprising that some of the first "mass media" photographs produced featured images of these majestic peaks. There aren't many views in New England that are as stunning as the vista of the craggy peak of Mount Chocorua looming in the distance over Chocorua Lake as you drive by on Route 16.

Anyway, today I have posted for the first time a stereograph card. The stereograph is basically a double set of paper photograph prints mounted on card stock which were viewed through a device called a stereoscope, to produce a three dimensional image. The images were either mounted on the card, or printed directly on it. The two photographs were made simultaneously with a camera with two lenses, the centers of which were 2-1/2 inches apart--the same distance between the center of person's eyes. Thus, each image is what one eye would see. Therefore when looking at the images through a "stereograph," the image appears three-dimensional, and life-sized. In 1861, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes invented a version of the steroscope viewer, which became the standard, and can still be found in antique shops today.

Perhaps the most famous American photographers who produced stereo cards were Benjamin and Edward Kilburn of Littleton, New Hampshire, who took this image. Interestingly, each of their stereographs was numbered and given a title. The one seen here is No. 125 and known as "The Babbling Brook." It is really a very interesting image of two ladies from the late 1860s who are sitting on a gigantic log on stream somewhere in northern New Hampshire. One of them holds a walking stick, and also further down the log is what appears to be a large blanket. I really like the sharpness of this image. Please click on it to get a closer look. For more information on the Kilburn Brothers, click on http://www.newhampshire.com/historical-markers/kilburn-brothers-stereoscopic-view-factory.aspx