Sawyer's, Inc. was an American manufacturer and retailer of
slide projector
A slide projector is an optical device for projecting enlarged images of photographic slides onto a screen. Many projectors have mechanical arrangements to show a series of slides loaded into a special tray sequentially.
35 mm slide p ...
s, scenic slides,
View-Master
View-Master is the trademark name of a line of special-format stereoscopes and corresponding View-Master "reels", which are thin cardboard disks containing seven Stereoscopic 3-D pairs of small transparent color photographs on film.Mary Ann & Wo ...
reels and viewers, postcards, and related products, based in
Portland, Oregon
Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...
. Founded in 1914 as a photo-finishing company, Sawyer's began producing and selling View-Masters in 1939, and that soon became its primary product. It later diversified into other photographic products, mostly related to film transparencies, and established manufacturing plants in Europe, Japan and India. By the early 1960s, Sawyer's was the nation's second-largest manufacturer of slide projectors, and by 1965 slide projectors had surpassed View-Master reels and equipment as a percentage of the company's annual sales. In 1951, the company moved from Portland proper to the
unincorporated Progress
Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...
area in Portland's southwestern suburbs. In 1966, Sawyer's was acquired by New York-based
General Aniline & Film (GAF), and its product lines and facilities were taken over by GAF. It was a subsidiary company of GAF until 1968, when it became simply a division of that company, renamed the GAF Consumer Photo Division. For several years thereafter, GAF used "Sawyer's" as a
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
name for its slide projectors.
Early years
Sawyer's was founded in
Portland, Oregon
Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...
, in 1914 by Carleton Sawyer and A. R. Specht as a
photo-finishing service.
Specht was a Portland executive in the
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
-based
Owl Drug Company chain. Owl Drug's Portland store was the chain's third-busiest, and Specht hoped to capitalize on the public's growing use of cameras by making Owl Drug a convenient source of photo-finishing services for Portlanders.
In mid-1919, Edwin E. Mayer, a camera enthusiast who had just graduated from the
North Pacific College of Pharmacy (in Portland), bought out Carleton Sawyer's stake in the company bearing his name. Later the same year, Mayer and three relatives acquired the remaining stake from A. R. Specht. According to a 1946 article in ''
The Oregonian
''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Tho ...
'', "For 20 years Mayer retained membership in the
pharmaceutical
Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...
ranks, but never practiced his profession,"
working instead on building up the photofinishing business of Sawyer's. In 1924, the company was occupying a , two-story building on SW 20th Avenue, next to
Multnomah Field
Providence Park (formerly Jeld-Wen Field; PGE Park; Civic Stadium; originally Multnomah Stadium; and from 1893 until the stadium was built, Multnomah Field) is an outdoor soccer venue located in the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Portland, Oregon ...
in central Portland. By that time, the company had begun producing photographic
postcard
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare.
In some places, one can send a postcard f ...
s and souvenir photo sets. As business grew, the company purchased an adjacent two-story building on SW Ella Street (now 20th Place) for expansion.
In 1926, Harold J. Graves joined the company. He had served a long stint as a
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...
photographer and then operated photo shops in
Salem and
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...
, before buying a stake in Sawyer's.
Graves handled
marketing
Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce.
Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...
for the company's products while Mayer ran the business. Later, photographic
greeting card
A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthday ...
s marketed to major
department store
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...
s were added to the Sawyer's product line. Sawyer's was the nation's largest producer of scenic
postcard
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare.
In some places, one can send a postcard f ...
s in the 1920s.
Mayer remained the company's general manager for more than three decades, until his death in 1956 from a heart attack.
View-Master introduction

The company took the first steps towards developing the
View-Master
View-Master is the trademark name of a line of special-format stereoscopes and corresponding View-Master "reels", which are thin cardboard disks containing seven Stereoscopic 3-D pairs of small transparent color photographs on film.Mary Ann & Wo ...
stereoscope
A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopy, stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image.
A typical stereoscope provides each eye with a lens that ...
after a chance meeting, at the
Oregon Caves
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve is a protected area in the northern Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon in the United States. The 4,554-acre (1,843 ha) park, including the marble cave, is 20 miles (32 km) east of ...
in 1938,
between Graves and William Gruber,
an organ maker of German origin trained by
Welte & Sons and an avid photographer, living in Portland.
The View-Master used disk-shaped "reels" which are thin cardboard disks containing seven
stereoscopic 3-D pairs of small color photographs on film,
and its individual eyepieces immersed the viewer into the scene more fully than previous stereoscopes. Mayer and Gruber had both developed devices for viewing stereo images, but Gruber had developed the idea of mounting tiny pieces of
Kodachrome
Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years, Kodachrome was widely used ...
color transparency film into reels made from heavy paper stock, for viewing in a stereo slide viewer designed for the reels. Gruber partnered with the owners of Sawyer's to develop the invention.
In late 1939, the View-Master was introduced at the
New York World's Fair (marked "Patent Applied For"). It was intended as an alternative to the scenic postcard, and was originally sold at photography shops,
stationery
Stationery refers to writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery usually specifies materials to be written on by hand (e.g., letter paper) or by equipment such as computer p ...
stores, and scenic-attraction gift shops. The main subjects of the first View-Master reels were
Carlsbad Caverns
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a national park of the United States in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico. The primary attraction of the park is the show cave Carlsbad Cavern. Visitors can hike in on their own via the natural ...
and the
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile ().
The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...
.
The View-Master was marketed through the photo-finishing, postcard, and greeting-card company, Sawyer's, Inc. The partnership led to the retail sales of View-Master viewers and disks. The patent on the viewing device was issued in 1940, on what came to be called the Model A viewer. Within a very short time, the View-Master took over the postcard business as Sawyer's biggest and most profitable product area. The company continued to make other photographic products, however, including about 30 million postcards per year and about 1.5 million photographic greeting cards per year.
By 1942, Sawyer's was selling its products through almost 1,000 retail outlets nationwide. It was manufacturing about 250,000 View-Master viewers per year by the mid-1940s. In 1945–46, the company added two newly constructed two-story buildings to its complex on and near SW 20th Avenue. As of spring 1946, the company was employing about 100 people, but a factory expansion under way at that time was due to increase that figure by about 75 when completed.
Factory relocation and expansion
In 1951, the company moved its headquarters and production facilities from its longtime Portland location near Multnomah Stadium to a new complex built on a site
in the then-unincorporated area known as
Progress
Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...
, between
Beaverton and
Tigard and in the southwestern suburbs of the
Portland metropolitan area
The Portland metropolitan area is a metropolitan area, metro area with its urban area, core in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington (state), Washington. It has 5 principal cities, the largest being Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Office of Man ...
. The site was located along a
Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway line
and adjacent to
Oregon Highway 217.
Stereocraft Engineering, a Portland firm that had been producing specialized machinery for Sawyer's since 1946, built its own new plant adjoining the new Sawyer's plant in Progress.
Also in 1951, Sawyer's purchased
Tru-Vue
Tru-Vue, a subsidiary of Rock Island Bridge and Iron Works, was a manufacturer of stereoscopic filmstrips and corresponding stereoscope viewers, based in Rock Island, Illinois, from 1932 to 1951 and in Beaverton, Oregon, from 1951 until the late 1 ...
, a producer of stereoscopic film strips that had been the main competitor of the View-Master product line. In addition to eliminating its main rival, the takeover also gave Sawyer's Tru-Vue's licensing rights to
Walt Disney Studios.
Sawyer's capitalized on the opportunity and produced numerous reels featuring Disney characters. The takeover would pay off further in 1955, with reels of the newly opened
Disneyland
Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...
.
The Tru-Vue Company was a subsidiary of Sawyer's, Inc.
Through the 1950s Sawyer's successively introduced new models of its View-Master viewer.
Sawyer's introduced the
View-Master Personal Stereo Camera
The View-Master Personal Stereo Camera was a 135 film, 35mm film camera designed to take 3D Stereo camera, stereo photos for viewing in a View-Master. First released in 1952, the camera took 69 pairs of photos on a 36-exposure roll of 35mm film, ...
in 1952. The camera allowed amateurs to create their own View-Master reels.
Most fabrication work on the new camera was carried out by Stereocraft Engineering, the established Sawyer's contractor that had followed Sawyer's in its move to a larger work site in the suburbs.
Within two years, the Personal camera had spawned the introduction of a 3-D projector, the Stereomatic 500.
A conventional
still camera
A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
named the Nomad was introduced by Sawyer's in 1956, with models for two different film formats:
127 and
620
__NOTOC__
Year 620 ( DCXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. The designation 620 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for ...
.
Diversification and overseas expansion
Sawyer's established a European
subsidiary
A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...
named Sawyer's Europe in 1952, in a newly built facility in
Sint-Niklaas
Sint-Niklaas (; , ) is a Belgium, Belgian City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality located in the Flemish Region, Flemish Provinces of Belgium, province of East Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Sin ...
, Belgium,
and expanded the factory in 1964.
It established three other foreign subsidiaries in 1958, in
Sydney
Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
, Australia (Sawyer's Inc. Australia
Pty. Ltd.
A proprietary company, the characteristic of which is abbreviated as "Pty", is a form of privately held company in Australia, Namibia and South Africa that is either limited or unlimited. However, unlike a public company there are, depending ...
);
Tokyo
Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
, Japan; and France. The French company was a subsidiary of Sawyer's Europe and was named View-Master
S.A.
During the late 1950s the company began manufacturing
slide projector
A slide projector is an optical device for projecting enlarged images of photographic slides onto a screen. Many projectors have mechanical arrangements to show a series of slides loaded into a special tray sequentially.
35 mm slide p ...
s (for conventional 2x2-inch slides),
viewers for conventional slides and scenic slide sets. By 1961, slide projectors had become Sawyers' second-most-profitable product.
A new model introduced in 1963 was known as the Sawyer's Rotomatic and used upright circular trays, called Rototrays, to hold the slides (100 per tray).
Sales totaled $8.6 million in 1961 and $9.1 million in 1962. New products introduced in 1962 included a
dictation machine
A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record Speech communication, speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder.
The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the ...
.
The company's workforce numbered about 300 in January 1960, but within two years it had more than doubled, to 687 at the beginning of February 1962.
Sawyer's was the second-largest U.S. manufacturer of slide projectors in the early and mid-1960s, second only to
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...
,
which had introduced the
Carousel slide projector
A carousel slide projector is a slide projector that uses a rotary tray to store slides, used to project slide photographs and to create slideshows. It was first patented on May 11, 1965, by David E. Hansen of Fairport, New York. Hansen was an i ...
in the early 1960s and patented it in 1965. A 1965 ''Oregonian'' article stated that Sawyer's was "one of the two largest U.S. manufacturers of slide projectors and related items, running
neck and neck
''Neck and Neck'' is a collaborative album by American guitarist Chet Atkins and British singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler, released on October 9, 1990, by Columbia Records. "Poor Boy Blues" was released as a single.
At the 33rd Annu ...
with Kodak, according to industry sources."
A portable projection table was introduced in 1964.
The company's main plant, in Progress, was employing 800 people.
The number of dealers selling View-Master products had grown to about 9,000.
Sawyer's made its first public offering of stock in 1962,
and a second offering was made three years later. In 1965, the View-Master product line represented 37 percent of the company's sales, whereas slide projectors and accessories accounted for 43 percent.
Sales of slides,
slide viewer
A slide viewer (also called transparency viewer) is a device for looking at film transparencies or similar photographic images.
Description
A slide viewer is usually a small handheld device with a slot in which a slide can be inserted to see a ...
s, Tru-Vue
stereoscopic
Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...
viewers and various other products made up the remainder of sales.
Total sales for the fiscal year ending in April 1965 was reported to be $19.3 million,
and amounted to $26 million (equivalent to $ million in ) in the following fiscal year.
A
movie projector
A movie projector (or film projector) is an optics, opto-mechanics, mechanical device for displaying Film, motion picture film by projecting it onto a movie screen, screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illuminat ...
for use with the then-new
Super 8 film
Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format. The formal name for Super 8 is 8-mm Type S, distinguishing it from the ...
was introduced as a new Sawyer's product around early 1965.

In 1965, the company was manufacturing 2,000 projectors a day, and daily production of View-Master reels had grown from a recent norm of 50,000 to as many as 160,000 on peak days.
In addition to its own name, Sawyer's sold its products under the
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
names View-Master, Tru-Vue and Pana-Vue, with sales throughout the U.S. and in more than 100
foreign countries.
Some of its foreign sales and manufacturing were made through subsidiary companies.
Largest of these was Sawyer's Europe, S.A., which was 57.5% owned by the parent company in the U.S.
and had a workforce of about 200.
It recorded sales of $2.7 million in fiscal year 1965, while a wholly owned Japanese subsidiary and a 49-percent-owned Indian affiliate collectively recorded a comparatively small total of $100,000 in sales for the same period.
Sales in Canada represented 5 percent of the company's gross sales.
Acquisition by GAF
In June 1966, the owners of Sawyer's Inc. revealed that they were considering selling the company to
General Aniline & Film Corp. (GAF), of New York and formerly German-owned,
and that the two companies had been negotiating on and off since July 1965.
A deal was finalized in October 1966, and Sawyer's Inc. was sold to GAF on October 31, 1966.
The manufacturing facilities and workforce in the Progress area, in the southwestern suburbs of the Portland metropolitan area, were retained by GAF. Sawyers, Inc. became a wholly owned GAF subsidiary registered in
Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...
, rather than Oregon, but initially continued to be managed by Robert Brost, president of Sawyer's since 1959, who was to remain in Portland.
However, eventually operations were folded into GAF, with the former subsidiary being renamed as GAF's Consumer Photo Division in 1968.
General Aniline and Film Corp., as opposed to "GAF", had remained that company's formal name until April 1968, when it was changed to
GAF Corporation.
[.] For several years after that change, GAF used "Sawyer's" as a
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
name for some of its slide projectors.
[GAF advertisement](_blank)
in ''New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
'' magazine, November 25, 1974, p. 59. Retrieved 2016-06-04.
GAF's Progress factory continued to do well and even expand in the years following the transfer of ownership, but after a peak employment of 1,700 at the site in 1973 the workforce size declined to around 1,200 by 1976. It had fallen to about 1,000 by mid-1977, when
layoff
A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing an organization ...
s of 400 were announced, which would reduce it to 600.
A decline in the demand for projectors was cited as a key factor.
At that time, ''The Oregonian'' newspaper reported that the ex-Sawyer's plant in Progress was "the only domestic operation that produces movie and slide projectors".
In announcing the layoffs in July 1977, GAF said it would be selling its projector-manufacturing operations and would also be discontinuing the manufacture and sales of consumer films, cameras and color paper.
References
External links
*
{{FormerORCompanies
1914 establishments in Oregon
1968 disestablishments in Oregon
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
Companies based in Washington County, Oregon
Manufacturing companies established in 1914
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1968
Office supply companies of the United States
Photography companies of the United States
Postcard publishers
Stereoscopic photography
1966 mergers and acquisitions
Defunct manufacturing companies based in Oregon