Before You Tube There Was View-Master

1955 Model E View-Master 3-Dimensional Viewer

My 7-year-old grandson routinely wakes up,grabs an iPad and watches a Minecraft tutorial on You Tube. When I was a kid during the preVCR/preDVD/pre Video game/preInternet age, we had the View-Master 3-dimension stereoscope for entertainment.



The View-Master system was introduced in 1939, four years after the advent of Kodachrome color film. The viewer, made of bakelite (early brittle formaldehyde laced plastic), held thin cardboard disks containing seven pairs of small color photographs on film. Surprisingly, Fisher Price still sells them. Mine was a Model E, more modern than earlier styles, with big ivory buttons on the picture changer levers and a large "V" slot on top for easier reel insertion.

My favorite story reel was "Little Black Sambo," first written and illustrated by Helen Bannerman in 1899. You may know it as the non-controversial Indian remake called The Story of Little Babaji or an exuberantly African-American folk fantasy titled Sam and the Tigers. 

Helen Bannerman was the wife of a Scottish doctor in the Indian Medical Services in the Tamil region of southern India. She made up the story for her two daughters to pass the time on a train trip. You can read a copy with original illustrations here. 

When I was first introduced to the book, I was too young to perceive the underlying issues that swirled around Bannerman's whimsical illustrations. I was unaware that demeaning pictures of black people were routinely found in books or that 'Sambo' was a common slave name whites used for a black man. I just admired the exciting and mysterious story of the little boy with a red coat, blue trousers, a green umbrella and elfin slippers lined in crimson. I just shivered at the thought of encountering four tigers. I just tasted the golden butter gathered from under the tree and the pancakes Sambo's mother made for dinner that evening.

My grandson seems only mildly impressed when looking into my old View-Master,which only interests him as a relic of the "old days". While he gets exasperated teaching my son (his dad) to create a new Minecraft world, I wonder what his children will be imagineer-ing when they are his age?