The New York Times published a nice piece about the collaboration between Dr. David Bassett and William Gruber to create the legendary View-Master Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy. The article establishes the intense labor of love that both men invested in the 25 volume set with its 1500 stereo pairs. The illustrations in the newspaper and the online slide shows are all 2D, (half of the 3-D image).
An antecedent of this project was the 1908 Edinburgh Atlas of Human Anatomy set of stereo view cards. Dr. Bassett would likely have used the Edinburgh set in medical school. New York Stereo Society member Dr. Chun Siang Chen continues the work of creating stereoscopic views for use in medical training. He reported at our June 2007 meeting that medical students learn more from their dissections when they have studied stereoscopic pictures. His images are sometimes gruesome but always amazing.
