Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire American snipers, 1860's style

Correction noted Sir, and I cannot quickly refind that link either. But for the general edification of us regular folks here's a pretty good scope history from the Berdan Sharpshooters' page...

http://www.berdansharpshooter.org/target_scopes.htm

While researching the subject, I discovered that the first documented telescopic rifle sight was invented between 1835 and 1840 by John R. Chapman, he was an English civil engineer, and as an engineer he was very familiar with a surveyors transit and therefore was very familiar with it�s fine cross-hairs, precision lenses and good definition of distant objects. He was also an expert rifleman and familiar with rifle sights of that time. It is believed that Chapman designed the first practical telescopic rifle sight and that he and Morgan James worked together to produce a telescopic sight that came to be known as the Chapman-James telescopic rifle sight.

Chapman did not patent his telescopic sight, but authorized Morgan James to manufacture and sell his telescopic sight.

Morgan James of Utica NY was a well-known gun maker who produced very accurate muzzle-loading rifles, he was considered to have made some of the most accurate muzzle-loading rifles in the world. When he started producing telescopic sights for his rifles they were considered to be among the most accurate rifles made....

The Morgan James sights were considered to be the best telescopic sights available until 1855 when William Malcolm, of Syracuse NY designed and produced a telescopic sight.

Malcolm established the first rifle telescope manufacturing business in this country in 1855, he produced the best telescopic rifle sight up to that time and it was considered superior to any other telescopic sights made for many years. Malcolm did not copy the Chapman-James design; while working for a telescope maker he had learned optical principles, how to make lenses, the importance of precise lens adjustment and to fabricate the metal tubes to hold lenses.

Malcolm also was the first to use achromatic lenses, which are a combination of lenses that limit color refraction in an optical piece. Achromatic lenses gave a much better definition of the target, a flatter field of view and a clear definition at the edge of any object. He also made the windage and elevation adjustments more precise than the Chapman-James sight. All of these design improvements were due to his telescope making experience.

The telescopic rifle sights he produced were between 3X and 20X power and considered to be the best available at that time; they had lenses ground for the �normal eye� or were custom ground for the person purchasing the telescopic sight. They were not adjustable and therefore the telescopic sight could generally only be used by the person for whom it was made unless your eyesight was �normal�. I�m not sure what �normal� was at that time, I assume he calibrated the sight to someone he used for that purpose or perhaps to his own eye. I haven�t found a description of what Malcolm considered �normal�.

Non-achromatic lenses have a "halo" of rainbow colors around the edges of the view field and therefore are not as clear, but that is what other telescopic sight makers used at that time.

Another telescopic sight maker was L.M. Amidon of Vermont, a jeweler and expert rifleman, he also designed and produced telescopic sights before and during the war, although none of his telescopic sights had achromatic lenses, they were still considered very good scopes for their time.

Fascinating stuff.

Birdwatcher