Were fantascopes for the rich or the poor?
General Public. I believe the type that is most common were
called Mutoscopes, made and marketed by International Mutoscope
co,. and mostly crank operated. they were once a fixture in
amusement arcades/ Turning the crank flipped the cards and produced
the movie effect. a more sophisticated motor-driven type was used
in the more sophisticated arcades and these often were shorts of
boxing matches such as Sugar Ray Robinson, etc. These machines,
both types survived well into the sixties and seventies as a sort
of nostalgia-= rerun thing.