Sawyer’s, Inc. was a prominent American manufacturer and retailer headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Established in 1914 as a photo-finishing company, Sawyer’s expanded its product line over the years to include an array of captivating items, such as slide projectors, scenic slides, View-Master reels and viewers, postcards, and more. However, it was the introduction of View-Masters in 1939 that propelled Sawyer’s into the limelight, becoming its flagship offering.

An Idea & a Wish

In the summer of 1938, William and Norma Gruber visited the Oregon Caves. As they reached the end of the tour, the guide offered them a chance to rub a “wishing stone” before returning to the bright daylight of southern Oregon. While William, a practical-minded piano tuner and amateur stereo photographer from Portland, continued walking past the polished stone, Norma stopped to give it a rub. Curious, William asked her what she was doing. She cheekily replied, “I’m just wishing that something would happen to your idea.”

William Gruber’s “idea” involved creating a compact viewer that could display full-color stereo transparencies using 16mm Kodachrome movie film. At the time, only a few enthusiasts like himself had ventured into making 3-D slides using the popular new Kodachrome film. Commercial production of stereographs was still limited to black and white, whether it was the remaining output from Keystone or the “modern” 35mm filmstrips from Tru-Vue. Gruber, an avid stereo enthusiast, had assembled his own paired camera rigs and firmly believed that combining color and stereo could be both popular and profitable, if only he could find someone with the necessary capital and business resources.

With his stereo rig, consisting of a pair of tripod-mounted Kodak Bantam Specials, slung over his shoulder, William Gruber made his way out of the cave exit and unexpectedly encountered Harold Graves, who was busy attempting to photograph some deer. Stereo cameras, it seemed, were just as effective at sparking conversations back then as they are today. Instead of asking Gruber to move, Graves was intrigued and asked, “What kind of camera do you have there?”

Harold Graves served as the president of Sawyer’s, a photo finishing and postcard company based in Portland. The company was in dire need of a fresh and profitable business idea. While the details of their initial conversation remain scarce, Norma Gruber recalls William saying, “Well, you’re exactly the person I’ve been wanting to meet.” That evening, the two men engaged in an extensive discussion at the Oregon Caves Chateau, delving into the intricacies of arranging 16mm images on a reel with the ideal 2½ inch separation for the eyepieces of a simple stereoscope. They also explored how seven pairs of images could be alternated without presenting any upside-down pictures. Mr. Graves was sufficiently impressed by the concept and its potential, wasting no time in convincing the Sawyer’s partners that such a system would be an ideal addition to their company. (William Gruber later credited his wife’s timely encouragement for the serendipitous encounter.) To kickstart production, Sawyer’s partner Edwin Mayer borrowed $50,000 from a relative for machinery and supplies.

Since the company had no funds to offer Mr. Gruber for his idea, he agreed to accept a percentage of future profits. He dedicated himself to designing a machine capable of mounting the small film pieces onto the reels, an essential element for the commercial mass production of the new stereo transparencies. As a young man in Germany, Gruber had honed his skills as a master piano tuner and an expert in designing and repairing organs and player pianos with their air-activated linkages. He applied his precision craftsmanship to the creation of the initial “reel machine”. With the hiss of air hoses and the clunk and click of cutters and prongs, workers gathered around the machine, performing the mounting functions that would later be automated in subsequent versions of the machines. These machines, which still form the core of the View-Master reel production process, owe their existence to Gruber’s meticulous work.

During times when funds were low, Mr. Gruber would tune a few pianos before returning to work on the machine. He would often tell his wife, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this machine could generate enough money for us to enjoy a two-week vacation every year?”

Despite their enthusiastic dedication, it is unlikely that the individuals involved with the View-Master in 1938-39 could have anticipated its immense popularity and the countless vacations it would fund. The original viewer, later known as the “Model A,” was initially adorned in gold and featured 15 scenic reels on blue stock with gold labels bearing the title and captions. Some reels were later produced on tan-yellow stock with a blue ring encircling the scene windows. The most commonly found early reels are those on yellow stock with captions directly printed on them (some have yellow on one side and white on the other). Reels manufactured in 1939 and the early 1940s showcase hand-lettered captions without scene numbers. The blue and yellow reels have only a single notch at the top, although there are hand-lettered white reels with both single and double notches. The notches serve to position the reel blanks in the mounting machines, with later machines designed to require double notches for registration. It can be reasonably assumed that any double-notched reel with typeset captions dates from after 1946, although precise dating can be challenging.

Reel numbers do not provide much assistance, as newly released reels with new scenes of old subjects retained the original numbers. The name “View-Master” was apparently chosen by individuals within the Sawyer’s organization. William Gruber, as relayed by his widow, disliked the name, arguing that it sounded too similar to Mixmaster or Toastmaster. He had favored a more imaginative and exotic name, but the straightforward product identity embodied by “View-Master” ultimately prevailed. Years later, a delightful validation of his criticism about the name arose when “Archie” cartoonist Bob Montana received a promotional View-Master, and his young daughter inserted one of the reels into the Toastmaster!

By late 1939, enough viewers and reels had been produced to commence regular sales of the product in Portland. The View-Master’s introduction to the rest of the world, however, occurred when it made appearances at the New York and San Francisco World’s Fairs in 1940. The public’s response to this new format of full-color stereo imagery was incredibly positive, leading to a thousand dealers across the country selling all the viewers and reels that Sawyer’s could manufacture.

The War Years

Sawyer’s rapid growth was abruptly halted by the outbreak of World War II. The scarcity of film, plastic, and paper posed a grave threat to the operation, and the View-Master’s very existence hung in the balance. However, a stroke of fortune came in the form of the army and navy’s recognition of the visual training potential offered by View-Master’s convenient viewers and stereo images. From 1942 until the war’s end, the military placed orders for approximately 100,000 viewers and 5 to 6 million reels. This ensured a reliable supply of raw materials for the plant and maintained a robust workforce, ready to tackle post-war production. The training reels, predominantly black and white, focused on ship identification through models shot on a hazy set, as well as aircraft gunnery range estimation with range circles and model planes in stereo. In 1943, the Model B viewer was introduced, boasting a sleek design, a sturdier hinge, and overall heavier construction. (The lighter Model A had a tendency to warp if left in the sun!)

With the war’s conclusion, the public’s demand for viewers and reels skyrocketed, which had been sustained by limited reel production and advertising efforts. In 1946, the company faced an avalanche of requests from stores eager to become View-Master dealers. However, since 1942, no new dealers had been added due to production constraints that couldn’t even meet the demands of the original 1,000 dealers. To meet this surge in demand, Sawyer’s downtown Portland operation expanded with the addition of two new buildings, and state-of-the-art automated machinery was installed to ramp up reel and viewer production. In 1946, the company officially incorporated, establishing an export department and growing its personnel to 150 individuals. At this juncture, Sawyer’s still held a prominent position as one of the leading producers of postcards and photographic Christmas cards in the country. However, the ever-expanding View-Master line was soon to bring an end to those operations.

In May 1946, plans were announced for the development of a View-Master stereo camera designed for amateur use. That same year, Stereocraft Engineering Company was established as an associated company to design and produce this innovative consumer product, along with specialized manufacturing equipment for Sawyer’s.

During that year, the Model C viewer was introduced, allowing reels to be inserted without opening the front of the viewer. Over the next decade, millions of these reliable devices were distributed worldwide and served as the foundation for all subsequent standard models. The Model C, known for its durability, remains practically indestructible, with a significant number of these timeless black viewers still in use today.

By the early 1950s, Sawyer’s had sold approximately 6 million viewers, leading to increased production to meet demand. In 1952, the company, which had grown to 300 employees, relocated to a new complex in suburban Progress, Oregon. This state-of-the-art plant became a showcase of modern factory construction, inspiring the creation of suburban “industrial parks” in the years that followed. The new facility alleviated production bottlenecks and enabled Sawyer’s to come closer to meeting the rising demand. Additionally, Sawyer’s became only the second company authorized by Kodak to process its own Kodachrome film, solidifying its position as the largest consumer of Kodachrome 16mm Duplicating Film.