Record Details

Name/TitleTray-Stere­o­scope

About this objectThe wood­en trays con­tain 25 slides each and can be insert­ed into the view­er by flip­ping back its top. Then, by turn­ing a crank on the right side of the hous­ing, one slide after anoth­er can be exam­ined. Each half-turn of the crank advances or returns the slides and moves the tray for­ward. A knob on the front serves for focussing by mov­ing the entire view­ing mech­a­nism inside the hous­ing back and forth.

Fur­ther read­ing: Stere­oscopy His­to­ry Series — Hemdé (A. Ruiter)

Place MadeFrance

Mak­erCuny, Émile

Mak­er RoleMan­u­fac­tur­er

Date Madec. 1905

Tech­niqueMul­ti-view, tray-based

Tech­niqueFocus, car­ri­er

Peri­od1893–1939

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Descrip­tionWood­en slide trays were a hall­mark of ‘Hemdé’ view­ers, but their true inno­va­tion lay in the crank mech­a­nism. Using a clev­er­ly thread­ed rod, it both lift­ed slides into posi­tion and moved the tray, enabling smooth for­ward and back­ward nav­i­ga­tion. The mech­a­nism was patent­ed in 1907 by Paul Sorel, Émile Cuny, and Mau­rice Delécaille.
While the trade­mark ‘Hemdé’ was reserved exclu­sive­ly for Delé­caille and Sorel, Cuny was the sole man­u­fac­tur­er of the view­ers. He evi­dent­ly also dis­trib­uted view­ers under his own name, although only a small num­ber of such exam­ples are known. Some unbrand­ed view­ers are also known; how­ev­er, their dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics indi­cate that they dif­fer from the major­i­ty of Cun­y’s view­ers mar­ket­ed under the ‘Hemdé’ trademark.

For­mat45x107mm

Object TypeStere­o­scope

Sub­ject and Asso­ci­a­tion Key­wordsFR380115 (É. Cuny, P. Sorel, M. Delé­caille, 1907)

Medi­um and Mate­ri­alsGlass Slides

Object num­berM‑ST095

Copy­right LicenceAll rights reserved