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3D Stamps |
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These stamps from an Arab shiekdom called Umm-Al-Qiwain
(worth 1 something or other) were cheap and interesting to a kid who used
to collect stamps (that would be me when I was a kid). They were
put in a drawer and not seen for 15 or more years until today (in January
1999), when I was looking for a good stamp to scan in for my email graphic
on the front page. These stamps have the same lenticular surface
as 3D baseball cards, or those 3D pictures you can take with the 3- or
4-lens cameras that you have to send off to be developed and printed.
The process used (not invented here) was to place the stamp on the left
side of the flatbed scanner first to create the right eye image.
Then, the stamp was moved to the right side of the scanner to create the
left eye image. This process is described as the Scanner method in
the Taking section of this
site in detail. The basic concept is that the actual imaging device
(CCD) is small and in the middle of the scanner. The optics that
reduce what you are scanning to that CCD actually have a parallax problem
that is exploited here. You can also do this with any small 3-dimensional
object.
