Houdini Stanhope Lens Viewers

HH Sustained Flight Description 001

Houdini is generally acknowledged as the first man to fly a plane in Australia. He made the historic flight just north of Melbourne in 1910. Two variants of a Stanhope miniature brass telescope were manufactured to commemorate the historic event and are quite rare.

Stanhope Lens Viewer Diggers RestHoudini Stanhope Viewer

Houdini collector, Joseph Gargano is now offering a viewer which is a reproduction of the Stanhope made to commemorate Houdini’s first flight over Australia. It comes in a beautiful wood box engraved with Houdini’s signature on the lid. This piece alone has sold for $195 and is now available for $105 which will just allow Joseph to recoup the cost of production, and get some money to The Houdini Museum in Scranton for the continued maintenance of Houdini’s grave.

Stanhope Lens Viewer Interior View

Looking through this novelty lens reveals an image of Houdini making his historic flight at Digger’s Rest in Australia. Here, he is pictured both in mid-flight in his biplane, and a separate posed close-up shows Houdini behind the controls of the plane.

For questions, purchases and shipping rates, contact Joseph Gargano at conjuringhh@optonline.net.

Stanhope Lens Viewer Grim Game

Joseph also offers a quality brass mini viewer with embedded lens showing an image from The Grim Game reproduced from an original glass plate negative in the Joseph Gargano collection. It comes in a small film can with Grim Game advertising image on the lid.  While supplies last, this viewer is offered as part of a larger Commemorative Set that is released in two very limited editions (Standard and Deluxe).  See John Cox site for details of The Grim Game Commemorative Set.

Standard Edition

The Grim Game Standard Edition

Deluxe Edition

The Grim Game Deluxe Edition

4 thoughts on “Houdini Stanhope Lens Viewers

  1. Remember the old Viewmaster with the daisy wheel slides? You held it up to a light source to look at the photos and clicked the latch with your right hand to rotate the picture wheel. An HH slide show would be cool with this.

  2. Joe–you can still get them on eBay. Tons of them for sale there and cheap. Lots of eBay sellers disposing of their childhood toys. I had a View Master as a kid but lost it ages ago.

    A Grim Game, Terror Island, or Master Mystery set of daisy wheel slides would be da bomb! Hell, any HH slide set would be cool.

    • Lol! I actually have an old view master and daisy wheel slides but not of HH. I have copies of all the stills from TGG and TI; just need to figure out how to get them transferred to daisy wheel slides.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *