Foldable Stereoscope ‚La Stéréo Carte‘ with picture set

Léon & Lévy, lat­er Lévy & Fils, was a French fam­i­ly firm of pub­lish­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and print­ers active from 1864 to 1913.
The firm Léon & Lévy was found­ed in 1864 by Isaac, known as Georges Lévy (trade­mark J. Lévy), and his father-in-law Moyse Léon* Both had pre­vi­ous­ly worked at the pho­to­graph­ic stu­dio Fer­ri­er & Souli­er, spe­cial­ists in stereo­scop­ic views in Paris, whose stock they pur­chased in 1864. Already pos­sess­ing an exten­sive cat­a­logue, they obtained the con­ces­sion for the 1867 Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle, and in 1869 com­mis­sioned views of the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Suez Canal from the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bis­son. Their cat­a­logue soon grew to include 30,000 photographs.
With the arrival of the two sons, Abra­ham Lucien and Gas­pard Ernest, the com­pa­ny shift­ed towards the post­card mar­ket. The trade­mark L.L., stand­ing for Lévy & ses Fils, was reg­is­tered in 1897, and the Lévy firm at 25 rue Louis-le-Grand in Paris became the sec­ond-largest post­card pub­lish­er in France.
On 25 Octo­ber 1898, Lévy & Fils filed patent FR 282,431 for a “stor­age box for stereo­scop­ic pho­to­graph­ic prints, dis­tin­guished by the fact that the box itself forms the view­ing appa­ra­tus for these prints.” The con­cept was reg­is­tered under the name La Stéréo-Carte.
The Stéréo-Carte takes the form of a cloth-cov­ered card­board box that unfolds at the rear. It con­tains a sup­ply of stereo­scop­ic post­cards, with the front of the box fit­ted with prisms for view­ing them. A cen­tral par­ti­tion between the prisms sep­a­rates the two images. The device was used to pro­mote and dis­trib­ute stereo­scop­ic cards pub­lished by Lévy & Fils.

(from: Moulin­ier et al. His­toires de vision­neuses stéréo­scopiques français­es. Limo­ges, 2025, p. 217. Author’s translation.)