The spectacularity of the universal exhibition apparatus collapses in comparison to the ubiquity and multipliability of photography. Stereoscopic images expose the world, they are knowledge and visual information, publicity and industrial saleability, they represent the convergence of economy and technique, reality and imagination, they destroy the space-time constraints of a unique and exceptional event, they miniaturise and render virtual a coveted and distant public sphere, they decree the birth of a bourgeois public, they lay the foundations for mass visual communication.

The optical device, the three-dimensionality of the visual experience, the large quantity available, the low price, the commercial distribution conquer the European and American bourgeoisie. Stereoscopic images open up the journey of the world, they can be seen in succession moving away from the physical context, they construct journeys for the spectator immersing him or her in another space and time, sensorially enveloping, hypnotic and virtual effect. Stereoscopic devices entered bourgeois drawing rooms, seduced women, amused children, became instruments of education and entertainment. At the end of the 1950s, the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company offered its public a catalogue of one hundred thousand photographic subjects, which multiplied in the international flow of interacting and exchanging subjects between companies in European and American countries. The stereoscope takes its place near  the Victorian fireplace.