Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Stereoscope
/ˈstɛriəskoʊp/noun
A device presenting two slightly different images, one to each eye, so the scene appears three-dimensional.
The Greek roots
στερεός
stereós
solid, firm
σκοπεῖν
skopeîn
to look at
Literally: “solid-viewer”
The story of the word
Charles Wheatstone built the first one in 1838, before photography was any use to him, so his demonstration ran on pairs of hand-drawn figures. He was proving that depth comes out of the difference between what the two eyes see, and στερεός, solid, named the result. Stereo sound borrowed the same word a century later to make the same claim, that two channels give you space.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1838
Same family
stereostereotypemicroscopetelescope
In a sentence
Victorian parlours kept a stereoscope and a box of card views of the Alps.
Aerial surveyors read overlapping photographs through a stereoscope to find the contours.