British Vintage Stereoscopy — Viewer
Sawyers Model B
A catalogue entry from the collection
| Name | Sawyers Model B |
| Manufacturer | Salford Electrical Instruments Limited, Salford, Lancashire |
| Date Period | c. 1946-48 |
| Materials | e.g. Bakelite, glass lenses |
| Format | View-Master reels |
The British-made Model B View-Master viewer.
Showing the flared eye pieces unique to the British Model B viewer.
Box lid - unique to the British Model B viewer.
So what’s this all about? How on EARTH does an AMERICAN VIEWER get featured on a site about British viewers?
Blame Salford Electrical Instruments Limited (SEI Ltd) of Salford, a town in what was then Lancashire, in the north west of England. An electronics company created around 1910 in the north west of England, they specialised in electrical components, switchboard equipment and the like. During World War 2, they had been very active in the invention and production of items to help the war effort, including involvement in the development of radar, and inventing a component which helped disrupt the flight path of the V1 and V2 flying bombs Germany was sending to the UK during the war - therefore saving many lives.
Once the war was over, they had considerable factory capacity to make use of and their managing director travelled abroad in search of business contacts and projects. One such agreement he came back with was to manufacture the Sawyers View-Master Model B viewer, first produced by Sawyers in the USA in 1944. Presumably with trade restrictions in place immediately after the war, Sawyers had no way of exporting their viewers to the UK - or perhaps, they couldn’t meet the production levels required yet and could only satisfy demand in their domestic market.
While exact dates are unrecorded, all the evidence points to this English Model B being made in England from some time in 1946 for at least a year or 2. From the early 1940s, Sawyers View-Master reels were distributed in the UK by the London office of an American company - the Victor Animatograph Corporation, a distributor of photographic equipment. It seems possible SEI Ltd made the Model B on behalf of Sawyers, then sent them to VAC for distribution in the UK - while SEI Ltd manufactured the Model B here, the moulding on the viewer body made clear it was the “Sawyers View-Master”, not the “SEI View-Master”. In addition, some versions of the product box have "Sawyers" overlaid on the box design. The viewer carried a patent number too - this wasn’t a special Model B patent but the UK patent in respect of the original viewer design, applied for in 1940 and granted in 1941 to the applicant - one “Wilhelm Biller Gruber” who was, of course, the inventor of the View-Master viewer.
Like the American one, the English Model B was made from bakelite but looks slightly different thanks to having flared eyepieces as opposed to round ones. These fit the eye of the person viewing better than round ones and also block out more ambient light - although they don't work so well if the user is wearing glasses! It was also only available in black, whereas the American one also came in brown and blue. The B - being made from bakelite - was rather more “solid” and robust to use than the previous Model A, which was lighter and made of Kodak Tenite (another type of plastic).
The B and the A both used a “clamshell” design - the user needed to open the viewer in order to put the reel on a central spindle for viewing. However, during 1946, Sawyers in the USA introduced the Model C viewer alongside the Model B in their product line - the first viewer that allowed the user to just put the reel into the slot in the top - a huge step forward in ease of use. The Model C and Model B were sold at the same time in the USA from 1946 - 1948, until the Model B was finally discontinued. This may have put an end to the English one too.
There is an article pointing out variations in the British Model B, so those are worth mentioning here as I couldn't find any mention of these online; according to an article from 1992 written by Dale Crosby, 2 moulds were used in production, with minor differences - mould numbers 44301 and 44302. Additionally, the same article reported there was a (much rarer) British Model B with an advance lever featuring a larger finger rest, along with a slightly wider closing latch. The 2 types are shown in the following picture:
Two British Model Bs. The one on the right has the larger finger rest. Original photo taken by the late Sheldon Aronowitz for the Dale Crosby article.
Despite apparently having a fairly short lifespan, the British Model B came in several different colour boxes - this may have been down to post-war paper shortages, just using whatever was available. With relatively few of these viewers in existence today, the production run of these viewers might have been relatively short, or it just didn’t sell well; no copies of advertising for the Model B in the UK have surfaced - it may well be that it was poorly marketed. There’s no evidence that’s yet come to light to suggest any of these were exported to mainland Europe, so it’s assumed they were purely for the UK domestic market. Certainly the Model C with its ease of use became enormously popular, which would rather have dented the appeal of the Model B - and perhaps Sawyers found a way to get these into the UK without them having to be made in the UK. The Model C was made in Europe but not until much later, when the Belgium Sawyers factory opened in the early 1950s; it was never made in the UK, so it seems the Model B was the beginning and the end of SEI Ltd's involvement in the View-Master story.
Just as I was putting this article to bed, friend of the site Paul Bond came across the following UK View-Master product leaflet from a few years after the Model B. By this time, the Model C viewer was still on sale here and View-Master (England) had replaced Victor Animatograph Corporation as the UK "arm" of Sawyers. The retail outlet Boots is still a nationwide high street chemist store. While not strictly from the period we're talking about, I thought it would still be of interest. As per usual, click on the image to expand it for easier reading.
A British V-M leaflet with reels available, dated 1955.
One last “fun fact” - the flared eyepieces were glued in place - the glue used is reported to dry up over the years, resulting in the eyepieces falling out. There are 2 repairs possible - glue them back in, or, as some have done, wind elastic bands around the lens barrel and twist them back into place; this method does at least allow the user to easily remove and clean the lenses from time to time.
As for Salford Electrical Instruments Ltd, there's no information suggesting they continued making stereoscopic items but they continued making telecomms equipment and electrical components for many more years, before falling on harder times and being absorbed into the much larger General Electric Company (GEC) in 1993.
Further Reading & Web Links
Image Sets To View (More to be added over time)
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