Although much of the his­to­ry of French stere­o­scope man­u­fac­tur­ers has been uncov­ered, the devel­op­ment of the Pan­to­scope remains obscure.
Pan­to­scopes are clear­ly the French response to Eng­lish Grapho­scopes. While we know that Mat­tey was the last man­u­fac­tur­er, lit­tle is known about the ori­gins. Mat­tey’s pre­de­ces­sors Fou­quet and Wyten­hove appear to have been involved in both the devel­op­ment and the cre­ation of the rich vari­ety of shapes and dec­o­ra­tive styles. How­ev­er, it is often impos­si­ble to deter­mine the man­u­fac­tur­er of a spe­cif­ic pantoscope.
The view­er pic­tured here dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the famil­iar design of French pan­to­scopes. Whether it was man­u­fac­tured in anoth­er coun­try — for instance, Ger­many or Aus­tria — remains unclear. How­ev­er, it came to us from a Ger­man collection.