New York Public Library's Stereogranimator Lets You Make GIFs
Out Of 19th Century Stereographs The resurgence of the GIF is a
throwback to the early Internet of the 90s. But is the GIF
itself an evolved version of a 19th century form? The New York
Public Library thinks so. With the Stereogranimator, the NYPL is
letting users transform 19th century stereographs into GIFs,
which lets people experience these historical images the way
someone in the 1800s might have. Drawing on a collection of over
40,000 stereographs, the Stereogranimator is a project of the
NYPL Labs, an experimental unit at the library using digital
means to develop new tools for research. "If you look through
enough of them, you start to notice that many from before 1900
come in seemingly-identical pairs. What you may not realize is
that these pairs were meant to be viewed together, each side
lending the other a sense of depth that a photograph alone
cannot possess," Joshua Heineman, who began a version of the
Stereogranimator as a personal p