Short­ly after the suc­cess of the ‘Véras­cope’ stereo­scop­ic cam­era, Jules Richard and his engi­neer Louis Colardeau patent­ed the ‘Stéréo-Classeur’ in 1899 and start­ed pro­duc­tion in the same year. Though, it was only poor­ly adver­tised in the com­pa­ny’s cat­a­logue. This would change one year lat­er, when it was renamed as ‘Le Taxiphote’.
The ‘Stéréo-Classeur’ was avail­able in two stan­dard ver­sions, one in waxed wal­nut and one in pol­ished mahogany. The view­er illus­trat­ed has the ser­i­al num­ber 42 and is there­fore one of first ever pro­duced. There are some dif­fer­ences in detail from the final design, which was already final­ized in the first year of production.