Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope ‘Le Tax­iphote’, Luxe

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 con­tains three draw­ers with four trays each, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to store a total of 300 slides.
In-depth infor­ma­tion on the Tax­iphote can be found here: Le Tax­iphote — the most famous French stereo viewer

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erRichard, Jules

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Mak­erColardeau, Louis

Mak­er RoleDesign­er

Date Made1905–1910

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 is a deluxe, spe­cial edi­tion mod­el which has been fin­ished in “Thuya” burl wood. These are rare, very sought after and demand a much high­er price than the stan­dard models.

For­mat45x107mm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

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

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

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsGlass Slides

Object num­berM‑ST091

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved