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.
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 has an unusu­al counter mech­a­nism. Instead of the com­mon cir­cu­lar counter with a knob for nav­i­ga­tion, it has one more lever. While nav­i­gat­ing to a spe­cif­ic slide requires rather fine motor skills, mov­ing the tray back to the front for exchange is quite comfortable.