A ROUND TRIP TO THE MOON

 Long before the advent of mobile phones, or portable video, cine films and slides were the order of the day. Super 8 and Kodakchrome film would allow anyone to make their own home movies or slideshow. Toy companies saw a gap in the market for children's slide viewers and simple projectors or the Marx Flashy Flicker gun shaped model, allowed kids to run their own tiny cinema show, just for themselves or for their friends. 3D became a big draw in the fifties, with the audience having to wear bi-chromic glasses to get a 3d effect from the film and the victorians had earlier perfected the stereoscope, which used to images of the same subject taken at slightly different angles, which when viewed though a special mount, gave a faux 3d effect. 

Two businessmen developed the idea of the early stereoscope and launched the 'View-Master' device at the 1939 Worlds Fair. Whereas the original stereoscope used to images at a time, the View-Master used special 16mm slides on a disc, 21 images in seven pairs. The user could press an advance lever to quickly move on to the next scene, with the stereo slides simulating the binocular effect and increasing the illusion of depth. The first View-Masters were marketed as 'scenic postcards' and sold via photographic suppliers and tourist gift shops. As the brand developed, it acquired the rights to use Disney cartoons and other famous children's series and the View-Master reached the hands of children.

Originally made from Bakelite, the simple viewer remained essentially unchanged, apart from moving to a lighter plastic version and adding the use of sound in more recent times. As a means to present a story for children it had the advantage over a book or a comic of being much more real and almost like a film and proved really popular.

With the advent of the space race, the factual and science series of reels naturally began to include space themed disks, one of the best being a 'Project Apollo - Man on the Moon' set. As it was originally released in the mid sixties, the imagery is largely based on the projected designs for the spacecraft, which were being put forth by the various engineering companies, eager to be first to the moon,

Early concepts for the LEM were much more streamlined and rounded, whereas the Apollo capsule remained more or less unchanged in basic shape.

The View-Master series uses models and practical effects for its slides, to capitalise on the depth projection in each scene. A simple painting would not provide the same illusion and actual photographic reference for the mission would not be available for some considerable time, so each scene was constructed methodically, using a combination of models, landscapes and back projections. As can be seen from the slides, a lot of trouble has been expended to ensure as much technical accuracy as possible, even to the apparent ages of the individual astronauts - most US astronauts were well into middle age before being chosen to go into space and the figures in the last few panels reflect this. Its possible that GI Joe or Action Man items have been used for the figures, as well as contemporary Revell or Aurora model kits. The LEM and Command Module may have been borrowed from one of the technology companies, as a means to promote their design, but the rockets and backgrounds are clearly produced in house. A lovely series of slides, which not only anticipate the images which would eventually be released by NASA, but also show the more romantic nature of the speculative side of the space race, as the astronaut discovers rare gems on the lunar surface. Its also interesting to note how mountainous the lunar surface is shown to be, as the slides were issued in 1964, they pre-date the moon mapping observations by the Lunar Orbiter series, which catalogued the lunar surface in preparation for the Apollo missions and never saw any evidence of high mountain ranges or deep valley ranges as seen in the show,