Underwood & Underwood

Underwood & Underwood, American stereographic company. In 1880, the brothers Elmer (1860-1947) and Bert (1862-1943) Underwood founded a firm in Ottowa, Kansas, to distribute stereos by Charles Bierstadt, the Littleton View Co., and J. F. Jarvis. The head office moved to New York in 1891, and the firm began buying and making as well as distributing pictures; by 1901 it was producing 25, 000 stereos a day and 300, 000 stereoscopes a year. It also began to market boxed sets of pictures on religious, educational, and travel themes. From 1896 news photographs became an increasingly important part of the business, with war, from the Graeco-Turkish conflict (1897) to the First World War, a particular speciality. Manufacture of stereos and lantern slides ceased in 1921, and the brothers retired in 1925. The stereo negatives and rights were sold to Keystone, which published them with a ‘V’ prefix. In 1931 the firm was split into four separate entities.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Darrah, W. C., The World of Stereographs (1977)

Underwood & Underwood was an early producer and distributor of Stereoscopic and other photographic images, and later was a pioneer in the field of news-bureau photography.

The company was founded in 1882 in Ottawa, Kansas by two brothers, Elmer Underwood (born Fulton County, IL 1859 - died St. Petersburg, FL 1947) and Bert Underwood (1862 - 1943). They moved to Baltimore and then to New York City in 1891.

In 1920, the company sold most of its catalog of stereographs to the Keystone View Company.

The company ceased business in the 1940s.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Category:Underwood & Underwood

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)