Like many opters, the Bellieni house , founded in 1812 and specializing in precision instruments, left Metz in 1872 to settle in Nancy at 25 rue de la Pépinière (now rue Gustave-Simon), then at 17 rue de l’Académie (now place Carnot). Charles Bellieni, accompanied by his wife, his three daughters and his son, Henri, brought a highly technical activity to the city of Stanislas. He was the first to have the idea of placing telephoto lenses on hand-held devices and in particular binoculars. After his death in 1880, his son, Henri, a particularly gifted photographer and inventor, took over the management of the company. In 1895 he invented the stereoscopic binocular and a few years later the universal binocular. The invention of new types of light cameras, known as the “Bellieni Binoculars”, won him the Gold Medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889.
In 1905, during the fiftieth anniversary of the Nancy Chamber of Commerce and its congress, an article in L’Est Républicain of December 10 specifies that eight thousand binoculars were manufactured in the Bellieni workshops, of which “three thousand were sold in America”. It is these same devices that contributed to a certain extent to the wide development of the illustrated postcard in Nancy.
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