Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Le Tax­iphote’ with Rare Patent­ed Counter Lever

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 base of the view­er has three draw­ers with four trays each, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to store a total of 300 slides. The elec­tric light unit was added lat­er. Although it’s clear­ly no Richard prod­uct, it’s well done and allows basic adjustment.
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 Made1907–1910

Series TitleTax­iphote

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 and remained in pro­duc­tion for around 40 years.
All mod­els were avail­able in two stan­dard ver­sions, one in waxed wal­nut and one in pol­ished mahogany. There were also deluxe ver­sions with chang­ing designs such as inlaid pat­terns of dif­fer­ent woods or addi­tion­al ornaments.
The view­er illus­trat­ed has an unusu­al counter mech­a­nism. Instead of the com­mon cir­cu­lar counter with a knob for nav­i­ga­tion, it has one more lever. While nav­i­gat­ing to a spe­cif­ic slide requires rather fine motor skills, mov­ing the tray back to the front for exchange is quite comfortable.

For­mat45x107mm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

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

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 293459 (J. Richard, 1904)

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR 370477 (J. Richard, 1907)

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsGlass Slides

Object num­berM‑ST090

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved