The Keystone View Company was a major distributor of stereographic images, and was located in Meadville, Pennsylvania. From 1892 through 1963 Keystone produced and distributed both educational and comic/sentimental stereoviews, and stereoscopes. By 1905 it was the world's largest stereographic company. In 1963 Department A (stereoviews sold to individual families) and the Education Departments were closed down, but Keystone continued to manufacture eye-training stereographic products as a subsidiary of Mast Development Company. In 1972 Mast closed the Meadville manufacturing site.
Founder
The company was started in Meadville, Pennsylvania by B.L. Singley, who previously was a salesman for Underwood & Underwood. Benneville Lloyd Singley was born December 8, 1864 in Union Township, Schuylkill Haven, in southeastern Pennsylvania.
In 1886 Singley came to Meadville, in northwestern Pennsylvania, to enroll at Allegheny College's preparatory department. College records list him as a first year prep student for three years in a row; after 1889 his name disappears from college listings. 1889 was the year that Singley married Anna Caraway, whose family lived in Meadville.
The Hall of Fame Annual states that while Singley was a college student James M. Davis showed him a stereograph of two silver gray foxes in the woods. Gazing at the three-dimensional image caused Singley to understand the educational potential of stereoscopic photography, and enkindled in him a desire to teach others through the use of stereoviews. James M. Davis distributed the stereoviews of the Kilburn Brothers and Benjamin W. Kilburn.
Company formation
In 1892 French Creek overflowed its banks and flooded Meadville. Singley photographed the damage, developed multiple prints of 30 negatives and pasted them on cardboard mounts bearing the name of Keystone View Company. By 1895 the company had issued approximately 700 different views. In 1898 Keystone began making and selling stereoscopes.
The company expanded rapidly and by 1905, the year the Keystone View Company was incorporated, it was the largest business of its kind in the world. All of the manufacturing was done in Meadville, but branch offices were in New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Toronto, Canada, and London, England. Salesmen and photographers were scattered around the world, and the company was offering 20,000 different views.
Educational Department
In 1905 Keystone View Company began its Educational Department, selling views and glass lantern slides (the 4 x 3.25 inch ancestors of the better-known 2 x 2 inch slides containing transparencies on film, which eventually replaced them) to schools throughout the country. They also produced lantern slide projection equipment.
Selling stereoviews and lantern slides to schools was a field pioneered by Underwood & Underwood, and for several years Underwood and Keystone were competitors for the growing educational market. According to the 1953 Keystone Sales Manual the more aggressive sales methods and the more progressive editorial policies of the Keystone View Company soon made it the acknowledged leader in the work, and Underwood & Underwood decided to give up the contest.
Over the years hundreds of educational sets were marketed to teach geography, social studies, science, history and reading. They even produced and sold a special line of stereoview sets for medical students. Lantern slides and stereoviews were often combined in sets, with one side of a stereoview printed on glass so that a two-dimensional image could be projected on a screen for the entire class to see. Students could then take turns viewing the three-dimensional version of the photos with the stereoviews and one of the many stereoscopes that came with the set.
The large classroom sets came housed in furniture quality wooden cabinets, which were made by the company.
Between 1915 and 1921 Keystone View Company purchased the negatives of nearly all of its competitors; they also continued to have staff photographers travel the world, so that by 1935 Keystone had approximately two million stereoscopic negatives.
Keystone View Company produced stereographic sets up through the mid-twentieth century, and had a stereoscopic photographer on staff until at least 1955.