The first ‘Brew­ster’ stere­o­scopes were made by the opti­cian George Low­don, of Dundee, at some point in 1849–50. We know this from Brew­ster, and from Low­don too. If we are to believe Lowdon’s Rem­i­nis­cences, he start­ed his career as a mak­er of sci­en­tif­ic instru­ments in May 1849, met George, ninth Lord Kin­naird, at the end of the same year and, through him, was intro­duced to Sir David Brew­ster. This means that he can­not have start­ed mak­ing stere­o­scopes before the end of 1849, after Brew­ster read his paper and most prob­a­bly after the Birm­ing­ham meet­ing of the British Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. We know from Low­don that he “got the mak­ing of the first one and the send­ing of copies of it to many sci­en­tif­ic men all over Europe.” Low­don can­not have made a great quan­ti­ty of these ear­ly stere­o­scopes, because he and Brew­ster soon fell out over a sug­gest­ed improve­ment. And since none of them seems to have sur­vived, we do not know what they looked like.
“The fault of Brewster’s stere­o­scope,” Low­don writes in his Rem­i­nis­cences, “was that the lens­es were too small, being, in fact, only the two halves of a spec­ta­cle glass. This did not suit every eye, and in exper­i­ment­ing I dis­cov­ered that larg­er lens­es were an advan­tage. I point­ed this out to Sir David, but he was wed­ded to his own opin­ion, and as I feared the idea, might be tak­en up by anoth­er, I took out a patent for my improve­ment – which expe­ri­ence has since amply jus­ti­fied – but my action was, unfor­tu­nate­ly, resent­ed by Sir David, and gave rise to con­sid­er­able fric­tion, for which I did not con­sid­er I was to blame, see­ing I had point­ed out the improve­ment, and he had refused it.”
Brew­ster and Low­don hav­ing part­ed com­pa­ny, Brew­ster was left with­out a mak­er for his stere­o­scope. He appar­ent­ly tried to get Lon­don and Birm­ing­ham opti­cians inter­est­ed but to no avail. It is not clear whether he con­tact­ed those opti­cians before or after he met Low­don, but we think it might have been before, which would explain why he entrust­ed the mak­ing of his instru­ment to a begin­ner in the trade.
(from: Pel­lerin. Stere­oscopy, The Dawn of 3‑D. Lon­don, 2021, pp. 53–54)