Brian May's Three-Dimensional Mind

BRIAN MAY HAS NEVER REALLY BEEN interested in doing anything halfway.

- Matt Blackett

“My father once told me,” he says, “‘if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.’”

That led to him building a guitar he would use his entire career—one that he got so right the first time out that it has never even needed a refret. Nicely done. He also dabbled in astrophysics—if, by “dabbled,” you mean that he got a PhD in the field.

A lesser-known fascination of Dr. May’s is the study of stereoscopy, defined as “a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision.” If you had a View-Master as a kid, you know exactly what that means. May first learned of this concept (which has its origins in the 1850s, before the advent of photography) via his breakfast cereal, Wheetabix, which provided stereo photos with an offer to purchase a viewer. When he sent in the box tops—plus one shilling and sixpence—and got the stereoscopic viewer, he was hooked.

“Stereo photos aren’t twice as cool as mono photos,” he says, “They’re a million times cooler.”