Bob Boyd is a former Army intelligence officer and Vietnam veteran. He is the author of numerous papers and articles on subjects ranging from local Pennsylvania history and genealogy to unconventional warfare. His interest in the Great War was aroused when he discovered a set of letters from his great-uncle, who was an aircraft mechanic in France. Bob lives in Virginia and contributed the majority of the original research found on this site. Bob has since made the decision to retire from the field and remove his name from the Collection.
Doug Jordan was a retired petroleum engineer whose career involved working in several locations around the world. He was an avid collector of WWI-related books and stereoviews, and first became interested in stereoviews as a child while playing with an uncle's Holmes-style viewer and cards. His wife's grandfather fought with the American forces in France. The Boyd/Jordan collection resided with Doug until early 2020, as did the responsibility for maintaining this web site and updating its contents as new information was discovered. He lived in Texas with his wife.
Ian Ference is freelance photographer, historian, and lecturer. He spent over a decade studying abandoned asylums & industrial sites throughout the United States, and documenting them prior to demolition. He became interested in stereography as a child, when he realized that he could free-view the stereoviews on display at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. Since the late 2000s, his primary interest has been in amateur & glass views of the Great War, and the newly-reformed Jordan/Ference collection resides with him. He lives in New York City with his wonderful wife.
The Jordan/Ference Collection had its genesis in the
mid-1990s. Bob and Doug were independently collecting
First World War-related stereoviews and ended up bidding against each other on
the newly-created eBay site. Unhappy with this situation, they made
contact (in those days eBay let you know who you were bidding
against!) and came up with a new strategy. As Bob was
primarily interested in the research aspects, he would scan his
purchases and sell them along to Doug. In turn, Doug would refrain
from bidding on "Bob's" lots and instead bid on others that Bob
hadn't found or bid on. They then shared image scans and any
information they could find regarding the manufacturers and set
contents, resulting in the image library and lists on this site. After the aquisition of a particularly interesting - and difficult - set of badly damaged amateur views was added to the collection, Ian signed on as Lead Research Archivist, and has now been placed in charge of the collection's future. With the help of his amazing wife Stacey, he is fully cataloguing and digitizing the physical collection while adding to it as regularly as possible.