Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope, Pro­to­type for ‘Le Tax­iphote, mod­èle mécanique’

About this objectA bake­lite tray con­tain­ing 25 glass slides can be insert­ed by flip­ping down the front of the view­er. Then, by depress­ing the lever on the right side of the hous­ing, one slide after anoth­er can be exam­ined. On the left side of the view­er, there is a counter which indi­cates the num­ber of the slide and allows nav­i­ga­tion to a spe­cif­ic slide. The slide title can be read through a prism lead­ing to a third ocu­lar above the eyepieces.
Although the ocu­lars are fixed to the front of the view­er, there is an unusu­al focussing sys­tem direct­ly affect­ing the slide trans­port mech­a­nism. A knob on the right side is con­nect­ed to a met­al pin behind the lever. It pre­vents the lever from mov­ing com­plete­ly upwards. Thus, the slide car­ri­er stops its move­ment towards the ocu­lars at a cer­tain posi­tion which works sim­i­lar to the com­mon focussing by lens movement.
The base of the view­er has three draw­ers with four trays each, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to store a total of 300 slides.
In-depth infor­ma­tion on the Tax­iphote can be found here: Le Tax­iphote — the most famous French stereo viewer

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erRichard, Jules

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Date Madec. 1905

Series TitleTax­iphote

Tech­niqueMul­ti-view, tray-based

Tech­niqueFocus, car­ri­er

Peri­od1893–1939

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Descrip­tionShort­ly after the suc­cess of the ‘Véras­cope’ stereo­scop­ic cam­era, Jules Richard and his engi­neer Louis Colardeau patent­ed the first mod­el as ‘Stéréo-Classeur’ in 1899 and start­ed pro­duc­tion in the same year. It was renamed as ‘Le Tax­iphote’ in 1900 and remained in pro­duc­tion for around 40 years.
There were two attempts to enlarge the vision of the 45x107mm for­mat list­ed as ‘court foy­er’ (short focus). One was the ‘Mod­èle optique’ using addi­tion­al lens­es for mag­ni­fi­ca­tion. The oth­er was the ‘Mod­èle mécanique’ which was the only short focus mod­el in the lit­er­al sense, because it indeed moves the slide clos­er to the ocu­lars. It remains unclear which of the two was intro­duced in the 1906 cat­a­logue, because both mech­a­nisms were already patent­ed by that year. How­ev­er, in 1908, both mod­els appear in the cat­a­logue. The crank oper­a­tion sys­tem of the ‘Mod­èle sim­pli­fié’ was adopt­ed to the ‘Mod­èle mécanique’ short­ly after 1911.
Back in 1905 there was a third patent which seems to have been aban­doned and nev­er got into pro­duc­tion. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the view­er illus­trat­ed exact­ly match­es these patent draw­ings. It shows no label, ser­i­al num­ber or any ref­er­ences at all. Although the mech­a­nism obvi­ous­ly was made pro­fes­sion­al­ly, some minor mod­i­fi­ca­tions obvi­ous­ly were made by hand after­wards. There­fore, it can be assumed that this view­er was still part of an ongo­ing devel­op­ment process.
There are some fur­ther indi­ca­tions that sug­gest that this is an ear­ly pro­to­type for the ‘Mod­èle mécanique’. If this is true, it is for­tu­nate that it still exists today.

For­mat45x107mm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 3503 (L. Colardeau, J. Richard, 1899)

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 351553 (J. Richard, 1905)

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsGlass Slides

Object num­berM‑ST063

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