an interesting little optical device c1901
Toronto. Camera collectors often included various odd looking optical items in their collection. In the late 1980s, I was browsing antique stores, junk sales, etc. for interesting items.
In one case, a little girl stood guard over a road side table of odds and ends including a small brass tube with openings on each side and an eye piece. “What’s that?” I enquired. “An eye looker” she replied. Intrigued, I bought the unsigned little brass tube. It was a low power ‘magnifier’ with side openings for a perhaps small bug? a bit of flower? a Stanhope pasted to the smooth block of glass? another tiny positive image? A ‘condenser’ at the bottom illuminated the block of glass.
The image for this post is the journal photo, of a nickel plated version of the magnifier, upsized with Topaz Photo AI and enhanced with that software and Focus Magic, then re-sized with Affinity Photo.
About a decade later, Everett included an article in issue 22-2. Ev titled his illustrated article, “A Mystery within an Enigma“. It described an almost identical item labelled “Pan-American Exposition 1901, Buffalo, N. Y. Price $1.00″ [one or two days pay in 1901].
Ev wrote, “This souvenir, inscribed Panamerican Exposition 1901, Buffalo, N. Y. Price $1.00, is a form of Stanhope. (Charles Stanhope, Chevening, England, ca. 1829). It was found in a box of miscellaneous items belonging to the late [photographer] Brodie Whitelaw.
“The cylinder is nickel plated and the exploded view reveals its construction. It is 46 mm long and 21 mm diameter. The magnifying eyepiece is cemented to a block of glass with a 7 mm square polished surface at its focus. Something must have been mounted on this (a collodion image?) for viewing.
“At the opposite end is a larger lens mounted in a tubular insert which is pierced with four peculiarly shaped apertures; these do not coincide with the single similar aperture in the outer tube. The larger lens is obviously to illuminate the object on the polished surface.
“Robert Carter has a similar, un-inscribed, brass device equally enigmatic. Who produced it? What was the purpose of the apertures? What was the object to be seen? $ 1.00 was a fair sum in 1901.”
