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. The patent for the ‘Mod­èle sim­pli­fié’ was applied for in 1907 and 1908 and was grant­ed in Jan­u­ary 1909. It was intro­duced as a nov­el­ty in the 1908 cat­a­logue and was also list­ed as ‘Mod­èle 1908’ for a while. The mech­a­nism of the ‘surélevé’ mod­el is iden­ti­cal to that of the ‘sim­pli­fié’. The only dif­fer­ence is that the hous­ing is taller, so the ocu­lars are at a more com­fort­able height for view­ing. This new design appeared around 1930.
The new crank mech­a­nism is quite com­fort­able to use com­pared to the com­mon lever mech­a­nism found in the oth­er mod­els. How­ev­er, the ‘Mod­èle sim­pli­fié’ was also announced to be the most afford­able mod­el and there­fore always lacks any milled edges. The view­er illus­trat­ed is the very cheap­est ver­sion which comes even with­out the adjustable ocu­lar distance.