Short­ly 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. The patent for the ‘Mod­èle sim­pli­fié’ was applied for in 1907 and 1908 and was grant­ed in Jan­u­ary 1909. It was intro­duced as a nov­el­ty in the 1908 cat­a­logue and was also list­ed as ‘Mod­èle 1908’ for a while.
The sim­pli­fied mod­el was avail­able in waxed wal­nut or pol­ished mahogany. The new crank mech­a­nism is quite com­fort­able to use com­pared to the com­mon lever mech­a­nism found in the oth­er mod­els. How­ev­er, the ‘Mod­èle sim­pli­fié’ was also announced to be the most afford­able mod­el and there­fore always lacks any milled edges. The view­er illus­trat­ed is the very cheap­est ver­sion which comes even with­out the adjustable ocu­lar distance.
The sim­pli­fied mod­el is usu­al­ly easy to dis­tin­guish from the oth­er Tax­iphote mod­els. Besides the crank, the for­ward-slant­ed top sur­face is par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing. The view­er shown here is there­fore espe­cial­ly unusu­al, as it is built in a com­plete­ly cuboid shape. How­ev­er, the ser­i­al num­ber indi­cates that it is not one of the ear­li­est mod­els. Pre­sum­ably, the “clas­sic” design was sim­ply a customer’s request. The year of man­u­fac­ture lies between 1908 and 1910.