LE VÉRASCOPE by Jules Richard

with a fixed stereoscopy in 45×107 mm format.

In this month of May 2025 we have chosen a very singular piece from the FBS Collection, LE VÉRASCOPE VISOR, a model of hand-held stereoscope, with fixed focus (without focus adjustment and without eyepiece separator) which the engineer, photographer and industrialist Jules Nicolas Richard (1848-1930) placed in his distributors’ exhibition and sales establishments, announcing that his headquarters were at 10 Rue Hálevy in Paris in 1907.

Their uniqueness is pointed out by Jacques Perin in volume 3 of his trilogy dedicated to Jules Richard et la Magie du Relief. We translate from his text that: in the course of his research “he had the good fortune to discover two exceptional pieces whose rarity perfectly justifies this description”, noting that, although the design, of these two scopes, was not unique in the world, the purpose for which they were used and the extremely limited number of exemplars found made them particularly attractive.

Both were demonstration tools, but the target audience was different. One of them was intended to promote the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, and therefore its distribution would be associated with places where tourism and the sleeping-car transport system could be promoted.

The other viewer is the one we see as the piece of the month of May/2025, in this case the potential audience was photographers and intermediaries in the sector. It was a direct demonstration that, to see quality stereoscopy, the best system was the Verascope. Jacques Perin explained that this stereoscope could only be found in Jules Richard’s shops or in his dealerships, placed on the sales counter and available to the future stereoscopist.

This LE VÉRASCOPE advertising and demonstration visor is made of mahogany wood. It is similar to the Brewster model, but with straight lines and large dimensions. Its body is divided into two parts:

From the support base, made of treated wood, to the central opening (9.5 cm) we have a first hollow box (tinted black) which acts as a light chamber, as it is fitted with a window with frosted glass in the upper part; inside it, and forming a 45º angle with the upper line of the window, we find a mirror on which the light rays fall, which are directed to the lower face of the second body, where the stereoscopic glass is fixedly positioned.

From the middle opening to the tablet with the eyepieces, the second hollow box (painted black) is extended, the length of which is 6.8cm. On the side opposite to the lenses there is a frame (also painted black) with guides to hold a stereoscopic glass of 45×107 mm format.

There is no mechanism to allow adjustments, or any other type of manipulation, to the elements that make up the viewer; unless you want to put a different stereoscopic view to replace the one in the base of the second compartment.

The 45x107mm stereoscopic view contained in the viewer when it was acquired for the FBS Collection, shows the façade of the shop at 10 Rue Halévy, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Calligraphically identified in the central area between the pairs, it is dated 1907; the person posing in front of the camera is not fully identified, although it was initially thought to be Jules Richard himself.

There is no doubt that the image shows the shop windows of the VERASCOPE RICHARD establishment, above whose sign in large letters, but in a different and smaller typeface, another sign read: ANCIENNE MAISON RICHARD FRÈRES. The latter was the family company inherited from Félix Richard (father 1809-1876), by two of the four sons from his marriage to Françoise Antoinette Froment (1821-1912) in 1843: Antoine Albert (1845-1912), Jules Nicolas (1848-1930), Félix Maxime (“Max”, 1856-1949) and Georges (1863-1922).

Specifically, the heirs were Jules and Max, who continued to manufacture and improve barometers and other measuring instruments after their father’s death in 1876, but the company was somewhat abruptly dissolved in 1891.

The artistic, technical and scientific mentality of the four Richard brothers allowed them to follow different paths, which often complemented each other, and which led to the creation of automobile companies, photography shops, developments in cinematography, industries and schools, which today we would call vocational training.

All this creativity and entrepreneurial drive came from both their father’s and mother’s sides of the family, as their mother was the sister of Paul-Gustave Froment (1815-1865), a French mechanic, instrumentalist and inventor, to whom a photograph on paper dated 1835 is attributed, four years before Daguerre and the French Academy announced the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839.

These genes and the Richard brothers’ ability to develop their potential, contrast with the stubbornness we see in people determined to make of themselves inventors from scratch. If we look at the case of the Richards, focusing on Jules, we see their patents and technology constantly being perfected to manufacture camera equipment, viewers and all their accessories, under the VÉRASCOPE RICHARD and HOMEOS brands, among others of their production.

The quality of the product was recognised from the very moment his products began to be marketed, after dedicating part of the original factory in Rue Melingue (Paris) to the manufacture of stereoscopic cameras and viewers under the brand name VÉRASCOPE, in 1893. In fact, in Spain, the Veráscopo built and patented by Jules Richard was advertised in the catalogue of Casa Salvi (founded in 1887 – with sales at 12-14 Sevilla Street in Madrid), as the high precision photographic apparatus with a real guarantee and practical for everybody. Salvi was also a stereoscopic photographer, and he represented many other manufacturers, such as Carl Zeiss, Goerz, R. Talbot, etc. However, he echoed Richard’s singularity by applying the laws of optical reversibility to his products, which was apparently a new idea, as he obtained absolute relief and perspective. This catalogue, published in 1904, dedicated pages 58 to 63 to this innovation.

The same catalogue also included other Richard products such as the Richard Taxiphotes automatic sorting stereoscopes.

A table stereoscope that automatically classified the views and indicated the place in the storage tray they occupied was, in practice, a scientific mechanism that Jules applied as a consequence of the teachings received from his teachers. In the first stage of his apprenticeship (between the ages of 15 and 18) with the watchmaker Émile Colin, then with Étienne Jules Marey (1830-1904) between the ages of 19 and 22, before taking over the family business.

The political difficulties in Europe, and in France in particular, make us look back to the period when Jules Richard took his first steps in his acquisition of knowledge, apart from the knowledge he might have drawn from his family environment.

His birth, on 19 December 1848, coincided with the election of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte as President of the Second French Republic (20 Dec. 1848 to 02 Dec. 1852). During his childhood, he lived through the coup d’état he staged on 02 Dec. 1851 and the proclamation of the Second Empire with the enthronement of Napoleon III (1852 to 1870) as Emperor, which covered his entire adolescence and even his early youth (from 5 to 22 years of age). At the age of 22-23 he lived through the Franco-Prussian War (19 Feb. 1870 to May 1871) and the end of the French Empire. At the age of 23, we find him precisely at the beginning of the Third Republic (04 Sept. 1871); meanwhile also experiencing something as significant and moving (in images) as the almost three months of the development and decline of the Paris Commune (18 Mar. to 28 May 1871). All these events must have marked the following years of Jules Richard and his contemporaries, including Carl Zeiss.

Several generations lived through these stages of history and, among the following vicissitudes, experienced the situations before and after World War I or what has come to be known as the Great War (1914-1918). Jules Richard reached this phase of history at the age of 66, and his social participation in these tragic years was active and constructive. He died in 1930, at the age of 81, after having set up sales and display centres, as well as factories and workshops in which he made his assembly lines for the stereoscopic photography sector, which was also included in the Jules Richard Foundation (founded on 16 July. 1923). He combined science, technique and practice; he devoted his time to the pursuit of the highest quality.