Later, in the 1970s, View-Master sales declined because the View-Master was unable to keep up with the newly developing toys of the time, specifically with electronic capabilities. The kid’s reels included fun Disney characters, like the Mouseketeers, but also educational reels, like the 1969 moon landing (Walsh 60).Īfter Gruber’s untimely death in 1965, Harold Graves sold the company to the General Aniline and Film Corporation (GAF), a larger corporation with a bigger advertising budget. In 1951, with Sawyer’s Photographic Services purchasing their largest competitor, The Tru-Vue Company, they received the rights to all of the Disney characters, thus initiating the concept of the View-Master as a kid’s toy. However, as the demand increased, many other photographers were hired to assist in obtaining the three-dimensional images. In the beginning, Gruber photographed all the images, predominately nature scenes, himself. Gruber brought this home entertainment gadget, initially marketed for adults, to the masses. It had its initial debut at New York’s 1939 World Fair (Walsh 57-58).
TALKING VIEW MASTER ELECTRONIC 3 D VIEWER DISNEY MOVIE
The idea struck the German immigrant while recuperating from surgery in an Oregon hospital where “e conceived of a way to use movie film to make stereo pictures and group them for viewing in a very efficient and inexpensive manner.” To make his vision happen, Gruber partnered with Harold Graves, president of Sawyer’s Photographic Services, who invested $50,000 in the idea. In 1938 William Gruber, a piano tuner and camera buff, invented a three-dimensional viewer known as the View-Master. William Gruber, inventor of the View-Master (Walsh 57).
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