STORY: Dutch museum holds VR history exhibition
SHOOTING TIME: Feb. 16, 2024
DATELINE: Feb. 17, 2024
LENGTH: 00:02:10
LOCATION: HAARLEM, the Netherlands
CATEGORY: CULTURE

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the exhibition "The Grand Illusion - 200 Years of Virtual Realities" in Haarlem, the Netherlands
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): MARC DE BEYER, Director of Teylers Museum
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): TRIENKE VAN DER SPEK, Chief curator of Teylers Museum

STORYLINE:

Teylers Museum, the first and oldest museum in the Netherlands, opened an exhibition to showcase the 200-year history of virtual reality (VR) development on Saturday in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
  
Entitled "The Grand Illusion -- 200 Years of Virtual Realities," the exhibition features objects from early optical devices to the latest VR technology.
  
SOUNDBITE 1 (English): MARC DE BEYER, Director of Teylers Museum
"The show 'The Grand Illusion' shows us the public in Teylers Museum when the optical illusions in the 19th century were born. It's amazing. It's a spectacle and the people were amazed at the time. But we're still amazed about virtual realities. And in this show, we show 200 years of virtual realities."
  
Interactive exhibits featuring rare artifacts and immersive installations depict the evolution of virtual experiences over two centuries.
  
One of them is Kaiserpanorama, a large wooden cabinet-like device popular in Europe in the late 19th century that allows people to view stereoscopic photographs.
  
SOUNDBITE 2 (English): TRIENKE VAN DER SPEK, Chief curator of Teylers Museum
"There are many but one of my favorites is the Kaiserpanorama, from our own collection, and it's standing here behind me. This was a way in which people in the 19th century could see almost real images in three dimensions. So it makes you think of VR headsets. But this is the 19th-century predecessor, real photographs. And this was like a pre-cinema, you could buy a ticket and see, for instance, do a little tour around Northern America, and see the Niagara Falls, etc, etc. And then a week later, you could return, buy a new ticket and see the pyramids in Egypt. So this was low-cost tourism available to many, but the effect of the optical illusion is still very impressive."
  
The exhibition will be staged until Sept. 1.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Haarlem, the Netherlands.
(XHTV)