The WILDHABER-NOVIKOV gear, one of the circular arc gears, has the large contact area between the convex and concave profiled mating teeth, moves from one end of the tooth to the other axially making a face contact. Hence it provides a large load capacity than the Involute gear and still satisfying the law of gearing. In order to analyze the gear stress, a photoelastic investigation was carried out. Photo elastic model of the WILDHABER-NOVIKOV gears were made of Araldite CT200 in this investigation. For both the many teeth gear and the few teeth gear segments, External gears of all addendum type WILDHABER-NOVIKOV gear and the involute gear were tested. Included were the models with various profile raddi at the same pressure angle 20 .deg. and module 13.5. The flank stresses and fillet stresses of these gears were observed in each case and compared with those of gears. From this investigation, the following results were obtained. A. In the case of having many teeth gear: As the profile radius is increased, the fillet stresses of the WILDHABER-NOVIKOV gear become the same or less than that of the INVOLUTE gea, and the flank stress becomes smaller than that of the INVOLUTE gear. Therefore the better design condition is satisfied with a large profile radius. B. IN the case of having a few teeth gear: As the profile radius is increased the flank stress of WILDHABER-NOVIKOV gear becomes smaller than that of the INVOLUTE gear, but the fillet stresses become larger than that of the INVOLUTE gear. Therefore the larger design condition is satisfied with small profile radius.