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Charles T. Moore
Stereoscopic Views!
n.d.
Broadside
Archives of Modern Conflict OR National Gallery of Canada
LL/12479
STEROSCOPIC VIEWS!
By Mr. Charles T. Moore.
Mr. Moore
is 22 years of age, 4 feet high and weighs 60 pounds. His being so small renders him unable to support himself by manual labor; hence he has adopted this source to maintain a livelihood, and respectfully solicits the patronage of the people, to whom he will present a choice selection of
PHOTOGRAPHS,
Highly Magnified by
Becker's Patent Revolving Stereoscope.
Those who have never looked through one of these instruments have no adequate conception of the grand, sublime appearance of views taken from nature, and the life-like appearance of Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Photographs, &c. Pictures of medium size appear as large as life.
The Following
Twenty-five Views
are fastened on a revolving wheel, and can be seen for 10 cents, or any number of them for 1 cent each.
The following additional material has been supplied by Matt Isenburg.
The broadside is self-explanatory and illustrates how a novel viewer presented cleverly could be turned into an instrument to generate income. This broadside definitely predates the Civil War since there is not even a hint of views of President Lincoln or the War. Of special interest is the fact that even the poem Genevre by Samuel Rogers* is quoted in accompanyment to stereo-view #12 to add a theatrical effect when read aloud by Mr. Moore, turning the simple viewing experience into somewhat of a dramatic presentation thus giving the paying customer something of a theatrical experience for his donation. The last line beneath the 25th view instructed the viewer to "PLEASE RETURN THIS PROGRAMME".
*Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) scion of a rich English family. was a partner in his father's bank at age twenty-one, head of the firm at age thirty, and retired with an income of five thousand pounds at age forty. Concurrent with his commercial career, he had considerable literary success publishing The Pleasures of Memory (1792) and his poetic collection of tales, Italy (1828). He befriended and possibily mentored, young Charles Dickens who dedicated The Old Curiosity Shop to him when it was published in 1841. Amazingly though he has been lost to the backroom of history, he was truly a Renassaince man, sucessful in business, a serious and sophistocated collector of art and a literary figure who lived into his nineties, vaguely remembered for his cruelly sharp tongue, his humanitarian principles, and his celebrated literary breakfasts.
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