The ‘Véras­cope’ cam­era was intro­duced in 1893 by Jules Richard for the 45x107mm glass plate for­mat. Richard lat­er expand­ed the term to a wider prod­uct line includ­ing not only cam­eras, but also stere­o­scopes, and acces­sories, help­ing pop­u­lar­ize stereo pho­tog­ra­phy. The ‘Stéréo­scope à chaîne’ belongs to this system.

The illus­trat­ed exam­ple is an espe­cial­ly ear­ly mod­el: its label describes the Véras­cope explic­it­ly as ‘Enreg­istreur’ (as a cam­era), show­ing that the name was not yet wide­ly known — sug­gest­ing pro­duc­tion with­in the first one or two years.

It has a promi­nent met­al label on the rear read­ing “pho­tographs tak­en with the Veras­cope”. So, this par­tic­u­lar view­er was like­ly used as a shop dis­play piece. Placed with its back toward a win­dow to ben­e­fit from nat­ur­al illu­mi­na­tion, the label was prob­a­bly added by the shop own­er to attract atten­tion from passers­by. Made of brass but bronzed to a dark brown, the fin­ish may also have helped reduce reflec­tions in strong sunlight.