IMPROVEMENTS ON STEREOSCOPES
Year: 1857

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to William Henry Phillips, of 16, Essex Street, Strand,
for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS ON STEREOSCOPES."
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said William Henry Phillips at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 1st January 1857.
I, WILLIAM HENRY PHILLIPS, of 16, Essex Street, Strand, do hereby declare
the nature of the Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS ON STEREOSCOPES," to be as
follows:-
This Invention has for its object improvements on stereoscopes. For these
purposes the frame or case of a stereoscope is made in two parts, hinged or
connected together at or near the base of each in such manner that the eye-
pieces may be brought to or moved from each other with greater facility than
heretofore to accommodate for different sights. The movement of the two
parts may be accomplished by hand when holding a stereoscope to the eyes,
or by a screw, or other convenient means. The lenses and eye-pieces, in place
of being mounted in sliding tubes, as heretofore, are each mounted on a tube,
produced by winding a plate or strip of sheet metal or other suitable material
spirally, and the elongating or contracting of such tube may be by a screw, or
other convenient means. The reflector is placed in the interior of the instru-
ment and at the back thereof, and the light (which enters from the front) is
reflected on to the picture, which is placed in a slightly inclined position. And
in order to give a better finish to the picture, it is arranged to be seen through
openings of another photographic picture, representing a frame, or curtain, or
other suitable device, according to taste, and such second picture may be either

page_text: fixed or moveable in respect to the stereoscope; and also in respect to the
pictures used therewith. When separate from the pictures, different pictures
may be viewed through the openings of the same second picture.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed
by the said William Henry Phillips in the Great Seal Patent Office on
the 1st July 1857.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, WILLIAM
HENRY PHILLIPS, of 16, Essex Street, Strand, send greeting..
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the First day of January, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, in the twentieth year of Her
reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me, the
said William Henry Phillips, Her special licence that I, the said William
Henry Phillips, my executors, administrators, and assigns, or such others as I,
the said William Henry Phillips, my executors, administrators, and assigns,
should at any time agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all
times thereafter during the term therein expressed, should and lawfully
might make, use, exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention
for "IMPROVEMENTS IN STEREOSCOPES," upon the condition (amongst others) that
Í, the said William Henry Phillips, my executors or administrators, by an
instrument in writing under my, or their, or one of their hands and seals,
should particularly describe and ascertain the nature of the said Invention,
and in what manner the same was to be performed, and cause the same to
be filed in the Great Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and
immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Henry Phillips, do hereby declare
the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be per-
formed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following
statement thereof, that is to say:-
This Invention has for its object improvements in stereoscopes. For these
purposes the frame or case of a stereoscope is made in two parts, hinged or
connected together at or near the base of each in such manner that the eye
pieces may be brought to or moved from each other with greater facility than
heretofore to accommodate for different sights. The movement of the two
parts may be accomplished by hand when holding a stereoscope to the eyes,

page_text: or by a screw, or other convenient means. The lenses and eye-pieces, in place
of-being mounted in sliding tubes, as heretofore, are each mounted on a tube,
produced by winding a plate or strip of sheet metal or other suitable material
spirally, and the elongating or contracting of such tube may be by a screw, or
other convenient means. In order to give a better finish to the picture, it is
arranged to be seen through openings of another photographic picture, repre-
senting a frame, or curtain, or other suitable device, according to taste, 'and
such second pictures may be either fixed or moveable in respect to the stereo-
scope, and also in respect to the pictures used therewith.
When separate
from the pictures different pictures may be viewed through the openings of
the same second picture.
And in order that my said Invention may be most fully understood and
readily carried into effect, I will proceed to describe the Drawing hereunto
annexed.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING.
Figure 1 is a side view of a stereoscope arranged according to my Invention,
so that the eye pieces can be brought nearer together or moved further from
each other, as may be required. a is the base of the instrument; and b, b, are
the two parts of the stereoscope which carry the eye-pieces; these two parts
are connected to the two ends of the base, but the material of which the instru-
ment is made is sufficiently flexible to yield to the extent necessary for the
adjustment of the eye-pieces at the point c; between the two parts b, b, a
hinge joint connects them together. Thus it will be seen that when the
milled head d is turned so as to screw the right and left handed screws e and f
into or out of their respective nuts e¹ and f¹, the two parts b, b, of the instru-
ment which carry the eye pieces g, g, will either be drawn towards or separated
from each other by turning on the hinge or joint at c.
Figure 2 is a side view of a similar stereoscope, with eye pieces mounted
on a spirally-wound strip of metal or other material. The material which I
prefer to employ is leather, and one end of the strip of which each tube for
carrying an eye-piece is composed is glued or cemented to the upper part of
the instrument, and the other end of the strip is glued or cemented to the eye-
piece, which in this form of instrument I prefer to make of wood. The strip
is then coiled up into a spiral, in the way shewn in the Drawing, and inside
the tube so formed strings or tapes are fixed to each convolution of the strip
to-prevent the spiral tube pulling out to too great an extent. In order to
facilitate the uniform drawing out and pushing in of two eye-pieces, I arrange
them so that they may be moved both together by means of screws. a is a plate
of metal to which the two eye-pieces are fixed; and b is another similar plate of

page_text: metal attached to the parts of the instrument which carry the eye-pieces.
Between the plates of metal a and b is a milled head c, by which right and
left handed screws d and e are turned so as to screw them into or out of their
nuts. In this way eye-pieces are moved to and from the top of the instrument,
and the required adjustment is obtained. The plates a and b will spring
sufficiently to permit of the distance between the eye-pieces being adjusted as
in the instrument already described.
Figure 3 is a side view of another form of stereoscope, in which the spiral
tube is made of such a size as to carry both the eye-pieces, and to become, in
fact, the body of the stereoscope; one end of the strip of which the spiral tube
is constructed is attached to the piece forming the top of the instrument and
carrying the eye pieces, and the other end to a ring at the bottom, and this
ring has a flap or cover hinged to it. The picture to be examined by means
of the instrument is placed on this flap; if the picture is on paper, or other
opaque material, the flap is held slightly open to admit sufficient light to the
picture; but if the picture be transparent, it is viewed by looking through it
and through the ground glass with which the flap is glazed. In order to give
a better finish to pictures viewed through a stereoscope, I permanently fix on
the base of the instrument a stereoscopic picture of a curtain, a frame, a group
of rocks, or other suitable object, and in the centre of each portion of this
stereoscopic picture a hole is made, so that when an ordinary stereoscopic
picture is slipped into the instrument under the first it will appear through
the holes in it, and when the two are viewed together the ordinary stereoscopic
picture will appear surrounded by a stereoscopic representation of the object
from which the upper or permanent picture was taken, and this forms a fore-
ground to the moveable picture. Or, in place of fixing the foreground picture
in the instrument, it may be mounted on a card so as to surround the ordinary
picture, but then it will be necessary to have a separate foreground picture for
each slide, whereas when the foreground picture is fixed in the instrument one
foreground can be used with any number of ordinary slides.
In witness whereof, I, the said William Henry Phillips, have hereunto
set my hand and seal, this First day of July, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven.
Witness,
GEO. HASELDEN.
WILLIAM HENRY PHILLIPS. (L.S.)