”2,Featherstone Buildings,28th September 1854.“Dear Sir,—In reply to yours of the 11th instant, I beg to state that I never supplied you with a stereoscope in which prisms were employed in place of plane mirrors. I have a perfect recollection of being called upon either by yourself or Professor Wheatstone, some fourteen years since, to make achromatized prisms for the above instrument. I also recollect that I did not proceed to manufacture them in consequence of the great bulk of an achromatized prism, with reference to their power of deviating a ray of light, and at that period glass sufficiently free from striæ could not readily be obtained, and was consequently very high-priced.—I remain, &c. &c.“Andrew Ross.“To Sir David Brewster.”
”2,Featherstone Buildings,28th September 1854.
“Dear Sir,—In reply to yours of the 11th instant, I beg to state that I never supplied you with a stereoscope in which prisms were employed in place of plane mirrors. I have a perfect recollection of being called upon either by yourself or Professor Wheatstone, some fourteen years since, to make achromatized prisms for the above instrument. I also recollect that I did not proceed to manufacture them in consequence of the great bulk of an achromatized prism, with reference to their power of deviating a ray of light, and at that period glass sufficiently free from striæ could not readily be obtained, and was consequently very high-priced.—I remain, &c. &c.
“Andrew Ross.
“To Sir David Brewster.”
Upon the receipt of this letter I transmitted a copy of it to the Abbé Moigno, to shew him how he had been misled into the statement, “that Mr. Wheatstone had caused a stereoscope with prisms to be constructed for me;” but neither he nor Mr. Wheatstone have felt it their duty to withdraw that erroneous statement.
In reference to the comments of the Abbé Moigno, it is necessary to state, that when he wrote them he had in his possession my printed description of the single-prism, and other stereoscopes,[29]in which I mention my belief, now proved to be erroneous, that Mr. Wheatstonehad used achromatic prisms, so that he had, on my express authority, the information which surprised him in my letter. The Abbé also must bear the responsibility of a glaring misinterpretation of my letter of 1838. In that letter I say that Mr. Wheatstone promisedto order certain things from Mr. Ross, and the Abbé declares, contrary to the express terms of the letter, as well as to fact,that these things were actually constructed for me. The letter, on the contrary, does not even state that Mr. Wheatstone complied with my request, and it does not even appear from it that the reflecting stereoscope was made for me by Mr. Ross.
Such is a brief history of the lenticular stereoscope, of its introduction into Paris and London, and of its application to portraiture and sculpture. It is now in general use over the whole world, and it has been estimated that upwards of half a million of these instruments have been sold. A Stereoscope Company has been established in London[30]for the manufacture and sale of the lenticular stereoscope, and for the production of binocular pictures for educational and other purposes. Photographers are now employed in every part of the globe in taking binocular pictures for the instrument,—among the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum—on the glaciers and in the valleys of Switzerland—among the public monuments in the Old and the New World—amid the shipping of our commercial harbours—in the museums of ancient and modern life—in the sacredprecincts of the domestic circle—and among those scenes of the picturesque and the sublime which are so affectionately associated with the recollection of our early days, and amid which, even at the close of life, we renew, with loftier sentiments and nobler aspirations, the youth of our being, which, in the worlds of the future, is to be the commencement of a longer and a happier existence.