How were old style stereographic structures produced?
Created in FORTRAN by Carroll K. Johnson, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and first released in 1965, ORTEP (Oak Ridge Thermal-Ellipsoid Plot Program) rapidly became a favorite of crystallographers and protein crystallographers to produce illustrations of structures for conference presentations and publications. A key strength of ORTEP was its capacity to generate stereoscopic images automatically.


For source of above and more information see: History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules

For the ORTEP program itself, check ONRL Report #3794: https://web.archive.org/web/20170210061629/http://web.ornl.gov/info/reports/1965/3445600599779.pdf (big file warning)