Stereoscope slide. Writing on left states "Underwood & Underwood, Publishers. New York, London, Toronto-Canada, Ottawa-Kansas"; Writing on right states "Works and Studios ~ Arlington, N.J. Westwood, N.J."; Writing on the bottom states "(1)-9307- Athens, old and new, S.W. from Lykabettos past royal palace (left) and Acropolis to the sea. Copyright 1907 by Underwood & Underwood. U-88483"

Back has writing:
9278. "That great marble building at our left is the palace of the king; rising in the middle distance is the ancient Acropolis. To the right of the Acropolis, on the shore, we see the modern town of Piraeus. At the extreme left, dimly seen over the waters of the Saronic Gulf, is the island of Aegina, twenty miles away. Directly before us the mountains of the Peloponnesus can be indistinctly seen. About one hundred miles distant directly before us lies Sparta.
We look upon the place which was for centuries the intellectual centre not only of Greece, but of the world. Upon the Acropolis, rising two hundred feet above its immediate surroundings, we see the Parthenon to the left and the Erechtheion and part of the Proylaea to the right. Directly behind the Acropolis, to the left of the Parthenon, is the Museion Hill with the ruined monument of Philopappos. To the extreme right, just below the Acropolis we see a dark rock, the Areopagus or Mars Hill.
When the Greeks in 1834 achieved their independence from Turkey, Athens was an insignificant village consisting of a few hundred inhabitants, living on the north side of the Acropolis. It was purely sentimental considerations that settled the question of the capital here; the selection of Athens instead of Nauplia has, however, been abundantly justified. The city now has a population of 150,000 and is constantly growing.
To the right of the palace, where some tall, dark cypresses appear, is Constitution Square around which the better parts of the city are grouped. From the lower side of that square Hermes street runs from the palace westward through the city toward Piraeus.
From Greece through the Sterescope, by Rufus B. Richardson, Ph.D., copyright 1907 by Underwood and Underwood."

"Athens old and new, southwest from Lykabettos." is translated in four languages.

Stereoscopes first became popular in the U.S. in the 1860s and 1870s when Oliver Wendell Holmes created a more economical viewer than what was previously available. A second wave of popularity of the device came about in the 1880s-1910s when the availability grew. Of the three major producers of the device, Underwood & Underwood was one of the leading in the country, producing over 25,000 images per day and around 300 million stereographs between 1854 and 1920. The devices were sold for $6 each, making it a popular item among middle class consumers.
(Retrieved from http://xroads.virgina.edu/~MA03/staples/stereo/stereographs.html)

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 in Fulton County, Illinois 1859- died St. Petersburg, Florida in 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.
(Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwood_26%_Underwood)

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