Spectroscope with Great War pictures

[clive_hughes]

My brother has just been given a spectroscope by a distant relative - it's a wooden (?mahogany) cabinet about 5 feet high, with viewing lenses akin to binoculars.  On looking through these and turning a handle, images come up and can be seen in a sort of 3-D effect.

 

There seem to be quite a few images (over 100), most of WW1 scenes published by the "Realistic Travels" company of London.  They include for example No.129, Punjabi troops arrived from Egypt march through Lestrem; or No.177, Our Infantry storm the Wotan line near ?Queant.  Other scenes are included eg. PB1100, view of Vienna.  

 

Has anyone else come across this type of viewer?  It's altogether a more substantial device than the 3-D hand-held viewers I have seen in the past.  

 

Clive

 

 

 

 

[Interested]

They are usually called Stereoscopes, and a cafe (I think it was near Hill 63) we visited about 25 years ago had a whole bank of them; the photo that particularly sticks in my mind was of the carcass of a horse stuck up a tree after being shelled.  Very realistic 3-D effect.

Philip

[clive_hughes]

Stereoscope might indeed be the right term - I went with the name my brother gave me!  It has no maker's marks at all on it, which I find a little curious.