29B THREE-DIMENSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHYThe last publication of this firm is one of the most ambitious
publishing projects ever attempted, and promises to be extremely
successful. The work is an Atlas of Human Anatomy published
for medical students, physicians and surgeons. In this work it is
hardly proper to speak of an illustrated text; rather it is a work of
photographs with explanatory text.
The work is divided into seven parts, each dealing with some
significant portion of the anatomy. The first part has been issued
and a description of it will serve to show the tremendous scope of
the complete work.
This first section deals with the central nervous system. There
are four volumes of “text” and 34 reels (238 pictures). As this is
an average “part” we may assume the completed work to include
something near 1600 stereoscopic Kodachromes and 25 to 30 vol-
umes of text!
The “text” consists of a series of pages upon each of which is
drawn a rectangle whose proportions are those of the Viewmaster
picture. In each rectangle is sketched the field of the correspond-
ing photograph, together with index pointers and numbers to
identify from 15 to 35 elements. You can compute the probable
number of total references in the whole work!
Over this sketch is superimposed a very light cross section grid
with specific linear measurement so that any desired measurement
can be made with a ruler. Each one of the photographs has its ac-
companying full page drawing of this kind. Facing the drawing is
a brief description and list of the references given.
Although the field of medicine is known for its publications of
tremendous size and complexity, nothing of this kind has ever be-
fore been attempted. I might add that I have never seen any stereo-
grams to excel those shown in this work,
Thus it seems that stereo illustration of publications is at least
firmly established, and we sincerely hope that other publishers
will see the light and start doing the same thing. After having ex-
amined all four of these publications, the writer can say that read-
ing the text while holding the light weight viewer in the free hand
is not at all troublesome. In fact it is a lot more convenient than
turning back or ahead a page or two to refer to an illustration in
the book which does not happen to face the page of test which
refers to it.