Jimmy Lee and his wife Rose lived in Menlo Park, CA on Willow Road. My dad met him in during WW2 and bought an Aeronca airplane from him as he advanced to a faster Cessna 140. Jimmy was kind of like me - into a lot of different things. Professionally, he manufactured XRAY tubes for hospitals. But he also was into stereo photography; using two Leica cameras side by side to take 3D photos of nudes. His wife was cool with it! Apparently he had thousands of these photos dating back to the 40's. My dad says that sometimes Jimmy and Rose would fly down to Hollywood to stay with Harold Lloyd.
I probably met Jimmy when I was very young, but our family moved to southern California and I grew up with no rememberance of him - just the stories my parents told. Jimmy died and his wife suggested I come up and see some of the things of his she was about to sell. So I drove up and was amazed at all the stuff that was there. The laboratory was just full of all these things that looked like right out of Frankenstein movies. A huge pedestal with wooden handles to increase the voltage - measured by a spark gap across two large black balls. Exotic tubes all over with intricate metalwork inside. Multicolored bottles of chemicals used in the glasswork as well as photography. I didn't have much money at the time, but I bought a microscope and one of those huge aerial camera lenses from her. Later, Rose died after suffering a fall and a neighbor inherited everything - and promptly threw most of it out! There were magazines dating back to the twenties, hundreds of stereo nude photos, all those tubes..... Aaaaarrrggghhhhh!!
Anyway, CLICK HERE to see the photos I took of his laboratory. By the way, the only nude you'll see is if you click on jl1.jpg and zoom in on the cool calendar on the wall....