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Above left: View Master and its forerunner, the Stereoscope. Right: Function diagram of NaturalVision
worked on it, mounted the mirrors on wood to avoid flicker, and upgraded to 35 mm. This
became the NaturalVision twin cameras. Technician Bud Bryhn made the mount.

All that was needed to produce the picture was the usual thing: money! Oboler himself had
written the script and would direct the picture. Then Robert Stack, who had seen the rushes of
the 3D tests, offered to invest in the project, and even convinced his mother to contribute.
Other relatives and small investors joined efforts, and so Bwana Devil came to life. A deal was
reached with United Artists to release the completed feature.

Natural Vision system had evolved from the old stereoscope viewer, which had also given birth
to the View Master device. This was a viewer which used a cardboard wheel containing pairs of
double frames printed on color film. The double images, one for each eye, gave a stereoscopic
three-dimensional view when combined by the brain. NaturalVision used the same principle,
but on a greater scale: two cameras placed a small distance apart were used to shoot the scene
reproducing the three dimensional vision of human eyes. The left and right negatives were then
synch-projected together on the screen through polarising filters. With audience wearing
polarizing glasses, the images merge into one in the human brain to become three-dimensional.
This method gave a realistic depth to the viewer, specially if the field of vision was broad and
showed elements at different distances. The nearest objects seem to pop out of the screen.

Was Bwana Devil the first 3D motion picture, as publicised? Not really.
In 1915, director Edwin S. Porter had projected a 3D test film which included views of the
Niagara Falls. It consisted of two reels of film in red and green superimposed on the screen. The
anaglyph system that would later become familiar. More experiments in three-dimensional
pictures followed.

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