Miniature Mono-Graphoscope

Antiq Photo, Paris^[*] #SL-26-01

France, ca.1895

Dimensions (open): H=14.6 cm, W=7.8 cm, D=14.6 Closed: H=2.7 cm, W=7.8 cm, D=13.6

Lens: ⌀=4.6 cm, ƒ=16.3 cm

 

Figure SL-26-01.1 – Miniature Graphoscope
Photo © Rod Bantjes.

This is the smallest known graphoscope designed to enhance the 3D effect of small-format photographs. It is an example of an “optical machine” and is included in the Optical Machine Taxonomy.

 

Taxonomy: This object is the kind of thing that gives grief to those who love to categorize and delight to others who like to see categorization thwarted by the free and fluid nature of things. Its maker has clearly conceived it as a small graphoscope. In morphology it is identical to a mono-graphoscope. It has the single lens; the same folding cigar-box shape; the same sliding wooden image-holder. However in miniaturizing it, the maker has had to reduce the lens diameter and that has changed the way that the device functions. Instead of viewing through the lens with both eyes, an observer can only view with one eye and that changes the optical principles on which it works. It should for this reason be a different family of objects, but everything else about it says it is a graphoscope. So, we have decided to call it a sub-family of graphoscopes. We had previously defined a graphoscope as having “a large (> 8 cm), short-focus (< 40 cm) lens for viewing photographs.” This device is the only exception to that definition.^[xxx]

 

Image-Format: The viewer was being sold with a stack of photographs. Measuring 9.1 x 5.6 cm (the photograph) on a 10.5 x 6.2 cm card, they are like miniature cartes de visite. While one possibility that occurred to us was that the device was meant to be a toy graphoscope, it seems more probable that it was purpose-built for this miniature image-format – a format that never became widely popular.

 

 

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