Coin operated stereo viewers

[bob]

I have written about some Australian stereo viewers previously but did not have the relevant photos to hand. The first of the viewers that I mentioned referred to one as a prototype as it is most likely the only one of these ever made. This was described as a stereo viewer by the operator of an ice cream/drinks/confectionery etc shop at the end of Melbourne’s St Kilda beach pier. He told me in the early eighties that I could have it, when he unearthed it from under a pile of stuff in a shed at the back of his shop. I dreamt here that this would unearth a Cail-o-Scope or similar old stereo viewer.

I would go and see him every six months or so, to see how he was getting on in uncovering it, following a walk down the long, long pier. This would have to be on a day when the weather was lousy, as otherwise he would be too busy to talk to me selling ice creams, drinks etc. He did not give his phone number to anybody as people would ring him at 5.00 am to see “how the fish were biting etc” until he changed his number to an unlisted one that he would give to no one.

Years later he finally unearthed it and said I could have it for a dollar a year’s storage rental since he first promised it to me i.e. $20. This stereo viewer was most likely made by a coin op machine operator who lived opposite him, who had a coin op machine located in the shop. I had bought this machine from him years earlier, a Mercury strength tester illustrated below.

The dreamt of Caillescope etc. viewer thus turned out to be the incomplete wreck of what looked like a homemade item. As I wrote previously, I sold it on unrestored to another collector who put it on ebay last year, still unrestored.

The next photo is the Beauty on Parade. I got this in a wrecked condition from Melbourne’s Luna Park amusement centre. The photo shows it as I got it in its unrestored condition. I always thought it was an American machine, but Gameswat thinks that this is an Australian made copy (50’s or 60’s). Also shown here is another example of this machine, called 3D Beauty on Parade.

The other Australian stereo viewer was probably made in South Australia. Here are some photos of it. One photo shows two of these in their original condition behind a Mutoscope model S and a Bolland’s Auto stereoscope.

Another photo shows the case of one without its marquee and metal outside the viewer eyepiece. Yet another photo shows the mechanism of one of these machines restored some years ago by Gameswat.

My coin op machine collection did eventually include an early American Cail-o-Scope stereo viewer, a British (Bolland I think) art deco Auto Stereoscope, a very early French stereo viewer with glass photographic stereo plates and another British art deco machine, the floorstanding Peerless stereo viewer which has a really excellent mechanism. All of these were extensively restored by me.

Although not in my collection there are a number of the British Art-Arama Show stereo viewers held in other people’s collections in Australia.

[brigham]

3-D Beauty Parade (the one with the roundels) must have started off as a 'Night Bomber' or some such, surely?

[bryans fan]

Great stuff Bob.

[gameswat]

That 3-D Beauty Parade is one I restored nearly 30 years ago and was never anything else. The sides were exactly like that when I stripped back the layers of paint. But I seem to remember that some of the front art had been worn away from foot wear and I had to make the best guess I could. This was sold 20 years back and re-purchased by me three years ago when I contacted the owner about buying some of the spare belts of Realist slides we threw in. These appear to have been a simplified version copied in Aust based on the US made Mutoscope 3 Dimensional Theatre below. I've seen several other examples of the mech I have and they all used Aussie or British bakelite fixtures and 220/40 volt motors, relays and wiring circuits.

[gameswat]

And bigger photos of the Fraser & Hosking steroviewer, two slightly differing machines, one with cast coin entry and the other with bent plate. I chose to put a vintage nudie reel inside the second machine shown in place of the original Swiss mountain scenes dating early '50s.

[pennymachines]

A few more which appear to incorporate domestic viewers:

1950s Art Show (Mike Munves)

1930s Select-A-View, Shipman Mfg. Co.

peep2.jpg (20.14 KiB) Viewed 4989 times

1930s Shipman Mfg. Co. Select-A-View Pinballhistory.com

Unknown maker

Filmprojectors.eu

[atticbrowser]

Very interesting! The Art Show viewers appear to be using a black Bakelite Tru Vue viewer, so the images will be on a continuous 35mm filmstrip. The Cinemate seems to be a variant of the Cinemate machine I posted a few pages ago. I was wrong to identify it as French, it is of course Belgian. This too appears to use a Model E Brown Bakelite Viewmaster viewer and so the images will be on a Viewmaster reel. Thank you all for sharing these pictures.

[bob]

When I posted my contribution yesterday regarding stereo machines I tried several times to include the photos in line. Every time I would get halfway down and click the wrong thing and lose the lot. So I prevailed on the administrator for help in placing the pictures in the text and Mr Pennymachines very kindly helped with this. He subsequently queried that I had not included a picture of the French stereo viewer and offered to place this in the text. However I did not include this previously as I did not consider my restoration to be a true restoration of what it would have looked like originally.

What happened here is actually a story in itself. I got this machine from a showman who had four or five similar machines which his father also a showman had operated. The stereo scenes were beautiful glass plate photographs of French scenes: the Eiffel Tower, Cathedrals, Champs Elysee etc. The machine as I got it can be seen in the attached before photo.

It was a wooden case covered in tin and then painted. I was sure that when I removed the tin there would be a lovely walnut or oak or similar cabinet underneath. Alas, when I stripped off the tin, I discovered the cabinet was made of cheap undressed timber of the type that was used in fruit packing cases. So I built a new cabinet for the machine.

The machine has a rear with a ground glass window against which the stereo slide can be seen. It has a mechanism which lifts a tin "curtain" when the penny is inserted and the knob turned and drops this "curtain" again after the last picture. I added a simple mechanism which turned a small torch globe light on and off together with movement of the "curtain" mechanism to illuminate the slides without having to place the machine against a light source. I did not include the picture previously as I did not consider it a restoration of what had it had originally been, but I guess it is of interest, so here are the before and after pictures.

Here's a photo of the six French stereo machines that I had to choose from. I chose one that still had the original glass slides with scenes of Paris.

And not really in the right place at all is a photo of a British fortune telling machine... Topic split to British 'Hair Colour' fortune teller Site Admin.

[ddstoys]

Bob again you have come through with some amazing info and some amazing photos.

Specially love the old one of my Artorama. I know it's an old photo of mine as I can also see my Sky Jump in the background.

Here’s a current photo of it.

[atticbrowser]

A huge thank you to everyone who has posted on this thread. Bob in particular has shared some fascinating pictures. I’m really enjoying seeing all these machines. The breadth and depth of member's knowledge is remarkable. A few pages back 13rebel said ‘I'm sure there will be many people on this site who would like further information, particularly the operating 'gubbins.’ I agree that the internal mechanisms are often fascinating. All the machines have to do the same things – present the images in a stereo format; take the money; move from image to image; look sufficiently appealing to pull in a customer. But they find so many completely different ways to do those things!

Anyway as a first go at ‘showing the operating gubbins,' here are some pictures of the workings of a Cinemate. This is the Belgian coin op viewer using a Model E Viewmaster, two models of which have appeared earlier in this thread. These pictures appeared in an online auction a while ago. For an auction listing there are some surprisingly detailed pictures.
Three things I noticed:
1. These pictures appear to give us a makers name.
2. In picture 3 we see from behind and it looks as if the diffusers have been removed from the Viewmaster. If that's the case then the pictures would be very 'glary' as the diffusers provide a nice even illumination and without them I'd have thought the bulb would be seen through the transparencies.
3. I hadn't realised that this was also a gum-ball machine!

[pennymachines]

I'm sure the early wooden cased machines are all well known by members and I see that the Oliver Whales stereo viewer has been discussed several times on here.

For those unfamiliar with those early coin-op stereoscopes - a brief survey:

Kalloskop

The German-made Kalloskop seems to be one of the earliest and most successful machines. It is dated circa 1895 and credited to Polyphon Musikwerke of Leipzig by Nic Costa (Automatic Pleasures).

Kalloskop

Kalloskop interior

It contained between 18 and 24 stereo tissue cards often presented in 2 series of 9 or 3 series of 8, thereby squeezing a few more coins from the punters. The chain of cards were advanced by pressing the knob at the front and a glass panel on top of the case provided illumination. There was also provision to hook an oil lamp on the rear for further illumination.

Stereskop

Early coin-operated stereoscope from around 1900 pictured on page 54 of Wenn der Groschen fällt...

Prinzess Panorama

The impressive cast iron multi-station stereoscope, Princzess Panorama was produced in 1895/6 by the pioneering maker of chocolate vending machines, Deutschen Automatengesellschaft Stollwerck & Co. (DAG).

Autocosmoscope

The Autocosmoscope is credited to L.V. Automatic Company Ltd. and dated 1898 by Nic Costa. However, other sources attribute it to Haydon & Urry Ltd. Gameswat was restoring the below example in 2009 (see Autocosmoscope - great name). He has it as 'Haydon & Urry, 1896'. Which is correct?

Autocosmoscope

Autocosmoscope interior

Haydon & Urry produced a film projector called the Eragraph in 1897 and (according to Costa) the Erascope around 1905.

Erascope

Another early British machine is the metal-clad Automatic Stereoscope (see below and in the Museum). Perhaps Sweetmeats has more information about this one. Currently it contains some wonderful stereoscopic dinosaur images.

[atticbrowser]

Gameswat kindly posted some more pictures of the coin op viewer using an Australian Viewmaster clone as the viewer. One minor feature I noticed (just putting on my anorak) is that the reel in the picture (copied below) is what is known as a Viewmaster Personal Reel. You can tell this from the way the pockets for the film chips have numbers next to them. So the reel was made by an amateur photographer using a Viewmaster Personal camera. These are great fun to use and allow you to make your own Viewmaster reels of friends, family and holidays (or in this case scantily clad ladies). It is a fiddly business, cutting out and mounting the tiny pairs of film chips in special blank reels. There are probably fewer than a hundred of us in the world still with the equipment and the patience to make these unique reels.

[gameswat]

Attic, I had a couple of those low production reels by Meopta, purchased from Czechoslovakia. I think they were early 1960's judging from the sets and hairdo's.

[gameswat]

The Autocosmoscope is credited to L.V. Automatic Company Ltd. and dated 1898 by Nic Costa. However, other sources attribute it to Haydon & Urry Ltd. Gameswat was restoring the below example in 2009 (see Autocosmoscope - great name). He has it as 'Haydon & Urry, 1896'. Which is correct?

PM, I never found a Patent by H&U for the machine, I took that from the Braithwaite book. It states the following three dates relating to the Autocosmoscope:

1) Haydon & Urry, 1896 - information from the book "The rise of the cinema in Great Britain" by John Barnes.
2) LV Automatic Co Ltd. 1898 - information from the book "Automatic Pleasures" by Nic Costa. (Braithwaite does write this "Probably means the Haydon & Urry machine of the same name" .)
3) William Haydon & Co, 1902 - information from 1934 World's Fair magazine.

[atticbrowser]

Referring to the Fraser & Hosking stereoviewer, Gameswat commented on the reel inside and explained ‘I had a couple of those low production reels by Meopta, purchased from Czechoslovakia. I think they were early 1960's judging from the sets and hairdos.’
He is quite right about the date of these and there are a surprising number of different reels to be found. Many sadly have turned to magenta with age. As to the reel in the photo though, that is, in my humble opinion a Viewmaster Personal reel. It may well have been used to re-mount a set of Meopta ‘Nude Girls’ film chips as the Meopta reels often fell apart! The picture below shows, on the top row, the verso of two versions of the Meopta Nude Girls’ reels. On the left is a Meopta Nude Girls reel mounted in Meopta’s own ‘Personal Reel.’ You can see where the numbers for the cells are printed – in the inner circle, and the colour of the numbers (black). Top right is a Meopta Nude Girls reel mounted in a factory sealed mount, which is plain on the back. Bottom row shows two Viewmaster Personal reels, where the cell numbers are printed in green and on the outer circumference of the reel. I think this is what is in the Fraser and Hosking viewer illustrated. Now I am definitely taking my anorak off.

[13rebel]

Great images and information. Attic, it's okay to don your anorak, many people on here follow that fashion.

[gameswat]

Attic, sounds like a good guess. It's been a long time since I looked at those reels so I can't remember much, just that I purchased them from someone in Czechoslovakia like that and they both had hand typed up labels which made me believe they were low production, both had different sets of images. I had a quick look on hard drives and old emails as thought I took photos but can't find anything. Did find more info on the Fraser & Hosking machines I sent to someone years ago though. The ex Bob machine was serial #13, then later on I purchased another example for a friend serial #34 - this has the cast coin entry. The state museum a third. And a fourth is owned by the son of one of the two makers.

[bob]

The inclusion of a Kaiserpanorama by Pennymachines brought back a whole heap of memories for me. A visit to the Kaiserpanorama in the mid thirties is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood in Vienna before my family left Austria in September 1938 and came to Australia in March 1939. As illustrated, the Kaiserpanorama consisted of a series of eyepieces in a circular wooden structure before which one sat and looked at stereoscopic photographs of views from all over world. The Vienna Kaiserpanorama was situated in a building on the “Ring”, the main circular street which had replaced the original walls of the inner old city of Vienna. These photos were on a carrier that rotated and brought up a new picture to look at every few seconds. The Kaiserpanorama was still there when I visited Vienna after the war in 1951 but was long gone on my next visit in 1989.

One of these Kaierpanorama World Panoramas is located at present in the Pioneer Settlement Museum situated in Australia in Swan Hill a country town about 340 kilometres north of Melbourne. The Museum bought this traveling showman’s outfit when it first opened and it has been on display in a small old building ever since. We last visited it in 2001 when this photo was taken. My first unexpected sight of this in an otherwise empty building was in 1982, a most haunting moment for me bringing back memories. The Kaiserpanorama operates unattended by an operator all day, with an electric motor rotating an umbrella like mechanism carrying the stereoscopic photographic glass slides. The museum was lucky to buy the whole outfit with a huge collection of slides from a traveling showman who still had it at the time of the museum’s opening. The Kaiserpanorama can be readily dismantled into the separate numbered wooden panels and the collapsible slide carrier system, but is of course now on permanent display. The display is accompanied by the playing of a tape track of an old acoustic recording of an opera singer (probably Dame Nellie Melba) in full flight. An incredibly moving experience for me.

Pennymachines illustration of a Kalloscop also brought back memories of an auction of photographic equipment etc., here in Melbourne many years ago which included a Kalloscop. A collector friend and I went to the auction and since the Kalloscop was right at the end of a long auction of cameras and lenses etc., we viewed the items and retired to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks. On our return we found that the auctioneer had galloped through the items and it was all over, so that’s why there was no Kalloscop among my collection of coin op stereo viewer machines shown here recently. This forum certainly does bring back some wonderful memories for me.

[gameswat]

Probably the most over-engineered of the earlier style stereo card viewers - Peerless Pictures - What a classic in every sense!

[13rebel]

Lovely story Bob, thanks for sharing your memories. Surprised to read partly from the 1930s!