hot dawg, it’s a stereo …

c1903 Leroy – combination stereo and panoramic camera from France – Courtesy of Brian Coe, AB Nordbok,  and Crown Publishing

Toronto. … with apologies to the late Sam Shopsowitz and his catchy jingle. Sam’s daughter, Karen, Spoke to the society back on September 15, 2004 about her father’s home movies. This post is on a different topic – a rare and unusual stereo camera c1903.

In the later 1800s – early 1900s, the French seemed to have a passion for making unusual cameras. The ‘Leroy’ is typical. It is both a stereo camera and a panoramic camera depending on the rotation of one lens (rotation automatically swings the septum plate to block the second (and unused) lens.

The line drawing is from the late Brian Coe’s book ‘Cameras‘, copyrighted 1978 by AB Nordbok, Sweden and printed in the same year in the USA by Crown Publishers. Coe’s book is eye-catching as the illustrations are a mix of line drawings and drawn coloured illustrations – a book on photography and cameras with no photographs! If you don’t have a copy in your collection – keep an eye out for one! I bought mine new a year after publication and it is very slowly discolouring on each page edge (any book etc printed after the mid 1800s likely uses paper made from wood chips (pulp) and is prone to self destruction by the very air in a room converting the pulp and moisture into sulphuric acid).

 

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