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atticbrowser wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 11:55 am 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:



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).



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.



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



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).



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?




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


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.

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.

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.

pennymachines wrote: 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Just spotted this coin op 3D viewer on line while looking for something else and thought it might be of interest

What a fascinating thread you have started atticbrowser.
So glad you stopped by! And not a bandit in sight .

Another fantastic post from Bob. There is nothing like first hand info. Thanks also to Rory, you were sorely missed when you were not posting for a time.
Great stuff everyone

I challenge anyone to show example of a more interesting, informative, erudite, helpful website than the caring crowd here at Pennymachines. (For the uninitiated, this is a show of support, not a true challenge. Spam/p-o-r-n sites need not respond.)

J Peterson
Already challenged in the USA

Two years ago while in Shanghai I saw what looked similar to the kieserpanorama in operation in the old city shopping area. The operator took the money then gave access to the public who then picked which machine to view from. All the photos seemed to be very old views of China. It wasn't until I saw this thread that I realized what sort of thing it was having never seen the like before. A great thread... and not an Allwin to be seen.

It’s amazing how this thread on the Pennymachines Forum has evoked memories of events in my past. Since my childhood I have been interested in motion pictures (ie films) and coin op machines. This goes right back to my schooldays when, on returning from our long annual Xmas holidays we were asked at our school, to give a talk to the class on what we had done in our holidays or something similar of interest. On one occasion I described a visit to the cinema projection box and its workings at a Melbourne city cinema. My father knew the manager of the cinema and arranged my visit which I found fascinating and further encouraged my interest in the movies. On another similar occasion I gave a talk, to the horror of the teacher and the delight of my classmates, on how to use coin operated machines without necessarily having to pay for the use of them. I had learnt how to use telephones, juke boxes, weighing machines and pinball machines without a coin by various methods and was happy to pass on this information to my classmates. These talks demonstrate my early interest in what was to become a lifelong fascination with both films and everything to do with them and coin operated machines of all kinds.

The combination of these interests led to my interest in the Mutoscope, a pre cinema coin op motion picture machine, which I have researched for many years and have restored over 40 machines of various models. As part of this interest I have collected various print illustrations of non stereoscopic peepshows which have been used by peepshow showmen for centuries over many parts of the world. These were the predecessors of both motion picture films and coin op stereo viewers. I have many illustrations (drawings, paintings and prints) of such peepshow men in my collection. Imagine my surprise and joy when I visited China in 2009 and quite unexpectedly came upon a person still operating a traditional Chinese peepshow, the same peepshow man in the shopping centre in Shanghai that Coppinpr found still operating more recently. I'll attach some prints of the Shanghai peepshow man as well as a couple of prints of traditional Chinese peep showmen. My collection of such prints includes showmen with traditional peepshows in many parts of the world.

Thanks for sharing Bob. Keep it coming!

The depth and extent of knowledge on this forum is remarkable! Coppinpr’s and Bob’s photos of the Shanghai Kaiser Panorama style peep show are fascinating. But they raise a question...although the location appears to be the same (the artwork behind the peep boxes is the same in both pictures) the viewers themselves have changed. In Coppinpr’s picture the viewers appear to have pairs of viewer lenses, suggesting the views could be stereo. In Bob’s picture though it looks as if the peep boxes each have a larger single lens, suggesting they are showing two dimensional pictures. Or does the operator have more than one set of peep boxes?

Yet in both cases the operator wears a black cap and dark glasses.

Nice photo from Coppinpr. I used to own one of these and, like most things, regret ever selling it. It is a later version of the Whiting Sculptoscope. Earlier versions have appeared previously on this thread. Referring to the ultimate reference source 'Stereoscopes the first one hundred years' by the late Paul Wing I see this was patented in November 1922, while the earlier, upright box version was patented in May 1913. The attached scan of the patent drawing is also from Paul Wing's book. After describing the viewing mechanism he goes on to say:

The ingenious mechanism for coin operation is most likely borrowed from other such devices. The penny falls in to position as part of the linkage. Sixteen pulls of the trigger later, the penny is released as the title card for the next set of 15 views pops in to place. The drum holds six sets (96 cards). The mechanism is simple and reliable. Large numbers of card sets were offered, some unique and some obtained through Ingersoll. The viewers were sold to local stores and the title cards often reminded the customer to patronise the store.

Here are a few more trawled from the Arena: