The 19th Century Meets the Digital Age

Specially designed liquid crystal
spectacles allow visiting school
groups to view stereo photos in
3-D on high-resolution monitors.

It might surprise students to learn that space-age technology designed for the Mars Pathfinder project has been harnessed to bring H. H. Bennett's eye-popping stereo photographs to life on a computer. The history center's special digital imaging exhibit  uses the latest in 3-D stereo-imaging technology to put  Bennett's stereo photographs in a powerful new perspective — and in a medium familiar to today's computer savvy students.

Computers, synchronized with special glasses outfitted with liquid crystal lenses, make figures in the historic images pop out of high-resolution monitors, giving unprecedented depth to scenes Bennett shot on glass plates more than a century before.