Stereo Indupor | Original-Indupor | Camerascope Viewer | 1920s Germany & London

Stereo Indupor / Original Indupor / Camerascope

**Germany / London, 1920-30s**

This viewer can be found under any of the above names and is associated with several different view publishers. The viewer itself is a folding, metal device usually in black with a glossy, crackled finish but we also have one in brown. The cardholder that holds the stereoview comes in 4 designs that we’ve seen so far: 1-piece, 2-piece with a thin, removeable metal insert, and 2 different “divided” cardholder styles capable of holding individually cut left and right images of different sizes.

Original Stereo Indupor, 1920s Germany

Professor Alfred Krauth and Carl Neithold founded the Stereo-Indupor company and designed the entire Indupor system which included Indupor stereo cameras and the Indupor viewers. The viewer’s Great Britain patent 173849 was granted to Stereo Indupor Ges. & Carl Neithold in 1922 so if the patent is stamped on the viewer, it helps date any associated stereoview sets. Krauth was also an award-winning portrait photographer who published his own stereoviews and upon traveling to America in 1924, he shot and published commercial sets there.

5 Variations of the Stereo Indupor Viewer

1-piece, stamped “Stereo Indupor G.M.B.H. | Frankfurt A/M | D.R.G.M.”

2-piece, stamped “Original-Indupor | Patent | Made in Germany” (1922 or later)

2-piece, stamped “Made in Germany | Original-Indupor”

2-piece, stamped “Made in Germany | Stereo Indupor G.M.B.H. | Frankfurt A/M | D.R.G.M.”

Luxus Stereo Indupor - Black

The leather cased versions are the “luxury” models of the Stereo-Indupor viewer. This one is black leather with purple velvet interior and gold embossed logo.

Luxus Stereo Indupor - Brown Leather

This is the brown crackled leather luxury model. We have 2 in our collection — one without any embossed logo and one with a double-print mishap going on.

Stereo Indupor - Portrait Sets

As mentioned above, Alfred Krauth was an award-winning portrait photographer. We’re pleased to find he made stereo portraits as well. Here are stereo portraits — one of them with cardboard framing — packaged as a boxed set with a Stereo Indupor viewer and instructions for using the viewer.

Special Boxed Indupor Sets

The Indupor sets most often found in America are in orange boxed sets. The logo & envelope design used for the German set from Alfred Krauth on the left is the same that’s used for the Oakland set on the right. The Oakland set is from a 7-set series covering the San Francisco Bay area in the United States.

Branded Indupor Stereo Viewers

We know that Alfred Krauth personally photographed the entire Textile Machine Works and Berkshire Knitting Mills plants over in America and produced special boxed sets for them. But there were many more commercial sets and even though we’ve been calling them “branded Indupors,” many of the commercial sets in our collection are from London and the views are published by Camerascopes, Ltd. These stereo sets were a great way for companies in the ‘20s-’30s to show off the inner workings of their factories in 3D — everything from products to machinery to workers to employee facilities. Often the viewers had the company name stamped, engraved or labeled on the front. We do have a few commercial sets with plain, un-branded viewers — this could be because the original branded viewer got lost through the years or there never was one. These industry stereoscope sets are a fascinating glimpse into the past so we’re always excited to find new ones.

Note: Stay tuned - each pic below will eventually link to a detailed page about that particular set. And we have at least 4 more sets to add.

The Camerascope, 1920-30s London

Camerascopes, Ltd incorporated in 1925 and published many commercial stereoview sets of businesses around London. They gave the viewer the product name “The Camerascope”. All of these viewers supplied with their views (except completely unmarked ones) are stamped with Stereo Indupor’s patent #173849. Some also have “The Camerascope" stamped on them. Two variations of these viewers have divided cardholders designed to hold individually cut left/right pairs in addition to the standard uncut cards. Those viewers were probably specifically designed for the sets published by Cavenders Ltd. The third variation has the same 2-piece undivided cardholder with removeable metal insert that we saw on the Indupor view

6 Variations of the Camerascope Viewer

2-piece, stamped “Patent No. 173849” at bottom

2-piece, stamped “Pat. No. 173849” in center

divided, stamped “Pat. No. 173849” in center

2-piece, stamped “The Camerascope "| Patent 173849” outlined in an oval

divided, stamped “The Camerascope | Patent 173849” outlined in an oval

The Camerascope - Sunbeam Tours

Sunbeam Tours published many travel sets calling them “Camerascopic Views” and advertising them for use with “the wonderful Camerascope”. The viewer is shown here with its black Camerascopes London box and logo. (Prior to this Sunbeam Tours also had their own Holmes-style viewer, called the Sunscope, along with larger, matte-finish travel card sets.)

The Camerascope - Cavenders Ltd., Peeps into Many Lands

Cavenders Ltd published an extensive collection of card pairs - one marked “left” and one marked “right” - that were included for free inside packages of Army Club Cigarettes. Their travel sets were called “Peeps into Many Lands” and they also offered other sets like the Coloured Stereoscopic example shown here. The back of the cards advertised inserting the cards “in their respective slots in the back of the Camerascope” and that a Camerascope could be purchased through them.

The Camerascope - The Anatomy and Physiology of the Eye

This special Camerascope set is titled “Anatomy and Physiology of the Eye” and consists of a book-style box with a Camerascope viewer and 20 detailed medical stereoviews of the eye. It’s the only Camerascope we’ve found featured this way. The viewer in this set has a completely matte finish unlike other Camerascopes that have a glossy finish.