Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Le Tax­iphote No. 1’ with addi­tion­al Mag­ni­fi­ca­tion Lens­es and Orig­i­nal Stor­age Cab­i­net con­tain­ing Autochrome Collection

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. There is also a small­er lever on the left which brings a mir­ror into posi­tion allow­ing the slide title to be read through the right ocular.
The base of the view­er has one draw­er hold­ing four trays, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to store a total of 100 slides. The stor­age cab­i­net con­tains nine addi­tion­al draw­ers, result­ing in a capac­i­ty of 900 slides in total.
The view­er illus­trat­ed comes with a very rare mag­ni­fi­ca­tion lens attach­ment pro­duced by Richard which can be hung onto the mech­a­nism right in front of the cur­rent slide. The mag­ni­fi­ca­tion achieved is sim­i­lar to the ‘mod­èle optique’ which was only avail­able for the 45x107mm for­mat. Togeth­er with almost 750 fine Autochrome colour slides by a Parisian ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er this is an unique and invalu­able ensemble.

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erRichard, Jules

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Date Madec. 1925

Tech­niqueMul­ti-view, tray-based

Tech­niqueFocus, lens tubes

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. The 7x13cm ‘Le Tax­iphote No. 1’ was first men­tioned in 1904 and was still avail­able in the final years around 1940. The met­al eye­pieces were intro­duced in 1911 and the view­er illus­trat­ed is most like­ly pro­duced short­ly before 1925 accord­ing to its ser­i­al num­ber. It remains unclear if the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion lens­es came with it or were bought lat­er. How­ev­er these were intro­duced in the 1923 catalogue.
All mod­els were avail­able in two stan­dard ver­sions, one in waxed wal­nut and one in pol­ished mahogany. Besides, there were deluxe ver­sions with chang­ing designs.

For­mat7x13cm, 6x13cm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsCH 19082 (L. Colardeau, J. Richard, 1899)

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsUK 7655 (L. Colardeau, J. Richard, 1899/1900)

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsUK 21430 (L. Colardeau, J. Richard, 1899/1900)

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 438123 (J. Richard, 1911/12)

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsglass slides

Object num­berM‑SF007

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved