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.

[1] 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.

According to a 1946 article in The Oregonian, "For 20 years Mayer retained membership in the pharmaceutical ranks, but never practiced his profession,"[1] working instead on building up the photofinishing business of Sawyer's.

In 1924, the company was occupying a 60-by-100-foot (18 m × 30 m), two-story building on SW 20th Avenue, next to Multnomah Field in central Portland.

As business grew, the company purchased an adjacent 70-by-90-foot (21 m × 27 m) two-story building on SW Ella Street (now 20th Place) for expansion.

He had served a long stint as a U.S. Army photographer and then operated photo shops in Salem and Eugene, Oregon, before buying a stake in Sawyer's.

Later, photographic greeting cards marketed to major department stores were added to the Sawyer's product line.

[2] The company took the first steps towards developing the View-Master stereoscope after a chance meeting, at the Oregon Caves in 1938,[3] between Graves and William Gruber,[4] an organ maker of German origin trained by Welte & Sons and an avid photographer, living in Portland.

Mayer and Gruber had both developed devices for viewing stereo images, but Gruber had developed the idea of mounting tiny pieces of Kodachrome color transparency film into reels made from heavy paper stock, for viewing in a stereo slide viewer designed for the reels.

Within a very short time, the View-Master took over the postcard business as Sawyer's biggest and most profitable product area.

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.

The site was located along a Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway line[8] and adjacent to Oregon Highway 217.

[9] Also in 1951, Sawyer's purchased Tru-Vue, 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.

[30][31] 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.

[32] 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".

[32] 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.