It was the best toy ever!” exclaimed Rona Mansfield, inn keeper
at Whiteface Chalet in Wilmington. “I got it for Christmas in
1962, and I used to spend hours just sitting on my bedroom floor
looking at all those wonderful places. I spent almost as much
time looking at the order form, trying to decide what I would
get next,” she said with a laugh. Mansfield’s favorite toy —
along with millions of other kids in the 1950s and ‘60s — was a
Sawyer’s View-Master, a stereoscopic marvel that presented the
wonders of the world in vibrant color. Her viewer, with its
built-in backlighting mechanism, provided hours of solitary
entertainment — every parent’s dream after the hustle and bustle
of a busy holiday season. Sawyer’s View-Master made its debut at
the 1939 World’s Fair, just four years after Kodachrome color
film was introduced. The 3-D viewer and the round photographic
discs that went with it were the creation of two Portland, Ore.,
men: William Gruber, a scenic photographer; and Harold Graves,
the president of P