An Early History of Rifle Scopes, 1776-1930

The Bullet:In

Shot show was a delight. It was great having the chance to meet so many people and take a look at some of the wonderful new equipment coming out this year. I have to tip my hat off to our neighbors at SWORD Defense Systems, who had great fun showing off their robotic dog. I’ll have you know there was much discussion of the Terminator franchise following the dog’s sighting.

The TD-3C will be ready to ship in just a couple short weeks. We’ve had a great deal of fun designing and testing it, and I think you’ll enjoy using it too. Built on our TD3 platform, this version features a user-selectable circle dot reticle.

And finally, I’d like to find out from the NRA rifle instructors in the crowd what that process was like. I’ve had the certification on my bucket list for a while and would love a look into what exactly goes on during the classes.

This episode is a little longer than normal, just due to the sheer amount of people that had a hand in many of the early scope advancements. Peale proved precision optics were possible, but painful. Chapman and James championed cold-drawn chassis. Malcolm made masterful glass coatings and commercially successful scopes. Warner and Swasey’s scopes went to war, but wrestled with mechanical issues. Winchester’s scopes went to war too, but better because of better blocks. Bausch & Lomb made good glass for a while, then great glass with Zeiss’ knowledge. Stevens stuck with domestic glass and bought Winchester tooling, but was bought by Savage and then Lyman. Fecker, friend to Warner and Swasey and Bausch and Lomb, fielded fine optics, and rings with clicks. Lyman found Fecker’s opticians to be useful hires, while Unertl left Fecker on his own.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by the website. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube. Don’t hesitate to drop by our instagram for more photos, @LeatherwoodOptics.