[SD&A email]

“The Theory of Stereoscopic Transmission and its application to the motion picture” by Raymond and Nigel Spottiswoode with illustrations by Brian Borthwick, originally published in 1953 but out-of-print for many years, is now available in electronic format at http://www.stereoscopic.org/library

This book is the latest addition to the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference Virtual Library, and joins several other pioneering but hard to obtain texts in the field of stereoscopic imaging.  By converting classic publications into electronic editions, the SD&A aims to make these volumes easily accessible to stereoscopic researchers once again.

“The Theory of Stereoscopic Transmission” provides a theoretical analysis of the three-dimensional geometry of capture and presentation of stereoscopic images as typified by 3D movies. Titles of chapters in the book include: Stereoscopic Depth Range, The Stereoscopic Window, Stereoscopic Calculators, Cameras with Variable Separation and Convergence, Projection, The Human Factor in Stereoscopic Transmission, and much more. An errata list is provided at the end of the book. Also included is an 8 page anaglyph 3D insert “Stereoscopic Diagrams” by Brian Borthwick and Jack Coote which illustrates some of the concepts in the book in 3D.

Author Raymond Spottiswoode produced several documentary short films during WWII, then such short 3D subjects as “The Black Swan”.  Joining with brother and co-author Nigel, they went on to spur the 3D film boom in the early 1950s and established Stereo Techniques Ltd. to produce stereoscopic documentaries and build improved 3D cameras.  Illustrator Brian Borthwick animated several short films including the 1952 3D film “The Owl and the Pussycat”.

James Spottiswoode, son of Raymond Spottiswoode, notes “It is very gratifying to me personally to have Raymond and Nigel’s book republished.  My father Raymond died in my early twenties and I became very close to Nigel during the last decade of his life.  We shared a love of mathematics and engineering and collaborated on several projects.  He died just when the first PC’s were emerging and the Internet was still ARPANET.  I know that both brothers would have loved the idea that their book was having a second life as a virtual publication”.

Lenny Lipton, stereoscopic technologist and SPIE Fellow wrote: “It’s wonderful that the Spottiswoodes’ book is being made available again. Empirically based, it proposes a theory that relates the geometry of stereoscopic camera and projection space and provides a coherent formalism that is elegant and rigorous. To touch on only one aspect of their work, the Spottiswoodes’ predicted the reduced interaxial requirement that is at the heart of modern stereoscopic image capture or generation and provided recommendations for dealing with the challenge.”

The SD&A conference wish to express their appreciation to the authors and heirs for their permission to make this book available to the stereoscopic community.

The book is available for immediate download from: http://www.stereoscopic.org/library