THROUGH THE electronic LOOKING GLASS

AMONG THE MOST FASCINATING pictures you’ll ever see in 3-D are those produced by scanning electron microscopes, or "SEMs"! These instruments, which use electrons rather than light to create images, are capable of magnification and resolution far beyond that possible with optical (or "light") microscopes, and the images they produce give you entirely different, amazing, and often very surprising views of even the most ordinary everyday objects. The addition of the third dimension to SEM views makes them even more spectacular, since you can actually see the spatial relationships in the images that you could only imagine in "flat" 2-D images. Bugs and other scary things are included. 

With many years of experience and a fine artist’s eye, Dee Breger, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, has used the SEM (her electronic "looking glass") to create stereo pairs of a wide variety of subjects, from the most common household items that you use every day to some very unusual scientific specimens. We’ve converted these stereo pairs to red/ blue anaglyph images for this book, and along with each 3-D image, a half-size 2-D duotone image of the same view is shown so you can compare the two and see for yourself the difference the third dimension makes! Since most of us know little about these sophisticated scientific instruments, we’ve also included several pages of interesting information about optical and electron microscopes, the differences between them, and how an SEM is used.

In cooperation with Dr. and Mrs. Wittig of Wittig Books in Germany, the work is published as a dual-language English and German edition. All introductory information and covers of Through The Electronic Looking Glass are in English; these same sections in the German edition, Streifzug Durch Den Mikrokosmos, are in German. Text accompanying the 3-D and 2-D images in both editions is presented in both languages. (By the way, all text, both English and German, is written so the book can be enjoyed by both scientists and non-scientists and by younger readers and adults alike.)

Here’s a list of the images and their magnifications in this most unusual work:

We think you’ll agree that these are some of the most fascinating 3-D images you’ve ever seen (even in 2-D, SEM images have a life-like quality most microphotographs can’t achieve)! The 3-D image size is 7x7 inches (17.8x17.8 cm) and faces the page containing the corresponding duotone and informational English and German text. Each copy of this 36-page, "Swiss Brochure"-bound (wire binding that lies flat with a wrap-around cover) 8½X8-inch (22x20 cm) book comes with two extra-large red/blue Maxi-Viewers.  These are a unique handmade anaglyph glass made by Cygnus Graphic and no longer available elsewhere.