Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Planox’ with Spe­cial Stor­age Desk con­tain­ing its Orig­i­nal Pho­to Collection

About this objectA wood­en 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. A tilt­ing mir­ror for bet­ter light­ing is attached to the back of the viewer.
The stor­age desk con­tains sev­en draw­ers on each side hold­ing six trays each, result­ing in a capac­i­ty of 1680 slides in total. This stor­age desk doesn’t appear in Plocq’s cat­a­logues, but was most like­ly built to order by a pro­fes­sion­al car­pen­ter mak­ing this ensem­ble unique.

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erPlocq, Alexan­dre

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Mak­erNoel, Mod­este

Mak­er RoleDesign­er

Date Madec. 1919

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. Lat­er ver­sions made use of bake­lite trays instead of wood­en trays.
The illus­trat­ed view­er along with its fit­ted pedestal desk belonged to the ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er Hen­ri Renault, who was based in Reims, France. It still con­tains his pri­vate stereo pho­tos, includ­ing some very fine Autochrome colour slides. It appears that Renault switched to roll film in 1940 and mount­ed these for use with a Unis France Metascope.

For­mat6x13cm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

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

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsglass slides (with met­al strips)

Object num­berM‑SF013

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved