(Credit for Photo: Photo Provided with Release Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Harrisburg, PA) The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) recently announced the opening of Seeing Double: Pennsylvania’s Industrial Revolution in 3D, a unique serial exhibit showcasing the state’s rich industrial history through antique stereo photography in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary this year. It will open on Saturday, April 18th and will run through the summer jointly across four PHMC museums on the Industrial Heritage Trail at:

• Cornwall Iron Furnace (Cornwall, Pennsylvania)
• Drake Well Museum and Park (Titusville, Pennsylvania)
• Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum (Scranton, Pennsylvania)
• Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania (Strasburg, Pennsylvania)

The exhibit originates from a 2023 show which was curated by Dr. Richard Healey at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Dr. Healey, a distinguished geographer at the University of Portsmouth, has dedicated much of his research to historic rail, iron, oil, and anthracite coal industries of Pennsylvania. Over the years, he cultivated a sizable collection of 19th and 20th-century stereo views: popular, inexpensive photographic novelties that originally offered three-dimensional images through a hand-held stereoscope. Dr. Healey transformed the antique stereo views into anaglyphs to bring these rare glimpses of the industrial past of Pennsylvania to a modern museum audience. Exhibit-goers will use red and blue offset glasses that were made popular by 3D movies in the 1970s to step back in time and experience a historical overview of the industries that built Pennsylvania.