Megalethoscope

The megalethoscope is a larger version (mega-) of the alethoscope, (Italian: alethoscopio, from the Greek “true”, “exact” and “vision”) which it largely superseded, and both are instruments for viewing single photographs with a lens to enlarge and to create some illusion of three-dimensionality.

It was a substantial status symbol,[9] an often elaborate item of furniture that only the well-to-do could afford;[2] some are highly decorated with pearl inlay and marquetry, and they often held collections of photographs in a cabinet beneath.

Ponti produced and published his imagery mostly for the tourist market in the waning era of the Grand Tour,[11] but also for connoisseurs of art and architecture, in large quantities and to an international clientele through outlets in Europe, England and America.

[12][13] The Practical Mechanic's Journal of 1867 noted minor improvements over the alethoscope that were made to later models of the megalethoscope, but the relative size of the two otherwise similar instruments is their distinguishing difference; 1.

[19] Ponti's success benefitted from his familiarity with, and repetition of, traditional painted views, and his distribution network through commercial studios beyond Venice, including that of Francis Frith in the United Kingdom and Pompeo Pozzi in Milan.

Ponti and his one-time collaborator, and later rival, in Venice were two of the well-known suppliers of travel photographs, beside the brothers Alinari in Florence, Giacchino Altobelli in Rome, Giorgio Sommer in Naples, Giacomo Brogi and Constantino Brusa in Milano, and the Studio Incorpora in Palermo.

[3] Ponti's rights to the alethoscope and megalethoscope lapsed after1866, due to administrative confusion after the Third Italian War of Independence, when Venice, along with the rest of the Veneto, became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy.

Despite Ponte's legal battles between 1868 and 1876 to prevent it, Carlo Naya began to manufacture and sell the Aletoscopio and Megalethoscopio (in some versions labelled a 'graphoscope')[21] which Ponti tried to counter by issuing variations of the instrument under other names including Amfoteroscopio, Dioramoscopio, Pontioscopio, or Cosmorama Fotografico.

[3] Megalethoscope prints continued to be produced into the 1890s, and in the twentieth century, simpler, mirrored devices, like the shomescope (1914), snapscope (1925 to 1935), some of them toys, including the reflectoscope (1930s),[22] were claimed to provide three-dimensional effect from two-dimensional single images.