Stereoscope ‚Foyer Long pour Autochromes‘

This unusu­al Mat­tey stere­o­scope fea­tures a sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer body than the com­pa­ny’s stan­dard hand-held view­ers. The extend­ed focal length reduced the image mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, mak­ing the rel­a­tive­ly coarse grain of ear­ly colour pho­tographs appear less obtru­sive than when viewed through a con­ven­tion­al stere­o­scope. It was there­fore specif­i­cal­ly intend­ed for view­ing colour trans­paren­cies rather than stan­dard black-and-white stere­oviews. There­fore, it lacks the hinged top flap nor­mal­ly used for illu­mi­nat­ing paper stere­oviews. As a result, it is suit­able exclu­sive­ly for view­ing glass trans­paren­cies or mount­ed colour slides.
The mod­el does not yet appear in Mat­tey’s 1915 cat­a­logue. By 1927 it is described as Foy­er Long pour Autochromes, indi­cat­ing its use with Autochrome plates. In the 1936 cat­a­logue, the same con­cept is list­ed as Foy­er Long pour Film­col­ors, reflect­ing the tran­si­tion to new­er colour pho­to­graph­ic mate­ri­als while retain­ing the same long-focus design.

Fur­ther read­ing: Stere­oscopy His­to­ry Series — Mat­tey (A. Ruiter)