Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Planox’, Sec­ond Version

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.
The view­er has a detach­able base con­tain­ing two draw­ers with three trays each, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to store a total of 120 slides.

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. Due to the design of the bake­lite trays, it was always pos­si­ble to insert both 45x107mm and 6x13cm slides into the same mech­a­nism. How­ev­er, slides in the small­er for­mat need to be stopped at a low­er lev­el than the larg­er ones. There­fore, a thick piece of felt is attached beneath the top lid to stop the move­ment. Behind the opti­cal unit, there’s an addi­tion­al mask­ing-frame for the small­er slides. For pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy, these two sim­ple mod­i­fi­ca­tions are of course much more attrac­tive than hav­ing to scale the whole mech­a­nism. How­ev­er, this 45x107mm ver­sion also shows a lack of care, because they did­n’t even short­en the slot of the oper­at­ing knob. As a result, it keeps hang­ing in midair.
A much more sat­is­fy­ing solu­tion were the bi-for­mat ver­sions have an addi­tion­al lever to switch between 6x13cm and 45x107mm.

For­mat45x107mm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

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

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsglass slides (with met­al stripes)

Object num­berM‑ST055

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved