This little "Flex-o-View" collapsible cardboard 35mm slide viewer from the Fifties is pretty hard to find today. Want to know where at least one resides? In box 2070 of the American Civil Liberties Union Records in the Audiovisual Materials collection being held at the Princeton University Library Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. What? For a simple "SQUEEZE to Focus" hand held slide viewer from Hollywood made in the early 1950s by Synchromatic Pictures? What possible interest could the nation's finest lawyers and civil rights watchdogs have in this little folded up optical device with a cheap plastic lens?
Someone on your payroll thought it inappropriate for you or anyone else to view naked women through it, or at least to use the public mails to get them to you. And so the little fellow the ACLU owns is indexed under "POST OFFICE - 1950 - BAN ON SLIDES OF NUDES" and it sits in the box with 5 racy examples. Ridiculous? I can imagine the ACLU lawyer saying the same thing as he held this up in the courtroom.
Cardboard Folding "Squeeze to Focus" Optical slide viewer circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
