Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Planox Uni­versel’ with Orig­i­nal Stor­age Cab­i­net con­tain­ing its Orig­i­nal Pho­to Collection

About this objectA bake­lite tray con­tain­ing 20 glass slides can be insert­ed by flip­ping down the front of the view­er, then, by mov­ing a knob, locat­ed on the right side, up and down, one slide after anoth­er can be exam­ined. The slides are pulled up by mag­nets which con­nect to met­al strips attached to the glass slides. Below the knob, a brass arrow will point to the num­ber of the slide that’s in view and allows nav­i­ga­tion to a spe­cif­ic slide. For that, the knob has to be stopped at an inter­me­di­ate posi­tion, which unlocks the tray move­ment. This posi­tion is also required to exchange the tray.
Due to the design of the bake­lite trays, it is pos­si­ble to insert both 45x107mm and 6x13cm slides into the same mech­a­nism. There­fore, this ‘Planox Uni­versel’ is a bi-for­mat ver­sion with an addi­tion­al lever on the left side of the hous­ing to switch between 6x13cm and 45x107mm, because the slides in the small­er for­mat need to be stopped at a low­er lev­el than the larg­er ones. An addi­tion­al mask­ing-frame for the small­er slides can be hung right in front of the magnets.
The stor­age cab­i­net con­tains ten draw­ers hold­ing six trays each, result­ing in a capac­i­ty of 1200 slides in total. The top of the cab­i­net can be shift­ed for­ward allow­ing a more com­fort­able sit­ting posi­tion when using the viewer.
There is also an elec­tric light­ing unit that can eas­i­ly be hung on the back of the viewer.

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erPlocq, Alexan­dre

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Mak­erNoel, Mod­este

Mak­er RoleDesign­er

Date Madec. 1929

Series TitlePlanox

Tech­niqueMul­ti-view, tray-based

Tech­niqueFocus, lens board

Peri­od1893–1939

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Descrip­tionThe ‘Planox Stéréo­scope Mag­né­tique’ was one of the most pop­u­lar French stereo view­ers and is notable for its inno­v­a­tive mag­net­ic mech­a­nism. The basic idea was devel­oped by Mod­este Noel, who reg­is­tered his patents in 1913 and 1914. Alexan­dre Plocq was like­ly the first to use Noel’s inven­tion for pro­duc­tion mod­els. The draw­ings of a third patent in 1920, again by Noel, show the sim­pli­fied mech­a­nism found in the view­ers that were actu­al­ly pro­duced. The illus­trat­ed view­er is a lat­er ver­sion with bake­lite trays instead of wood­en trays. 
The out­er appear­ance already shows a new design that was most like­ly intro­duced in the late 1920’s. How­ev­er, the design of the cab­i­net which had been quite inde­pen­dent of the first view­er design to begin with remained unchanged for a few more years.
The view­er and cab­i­net belonged to a Parisian fam­i­ly and still con­tain the pri­vate stereo pho­tos, includ­ing some very fine Autochrome colour slides.

For­mat6x13cm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 23679 (M. Noel, 1920/21)

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsglass slides (with met­al stripes)

Object num­berM‑SF003

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved