There were a lot more early scope makers, 'Old Rifle Scopes' by Nick Strobel cover many of them with a lot of history. From my experience with several makes of early 1900's scopes, Stevens made the most usable with more eye relief than most of the others. They also made more varieties than anyone else with scopes made specifically for a lot of different guns. Some early catalogs have as many a 12 different types of mounts, later they did get down to offering just two, The No 1'a & No 8's. Stevens got into the scope business by buying the Cataract Tool & Optical Co. of Buffalo, NY.
I think they are wrong about Stevens buying Winchester's scopes, all other sources on Lyman histories say Lyman bought Winchester's line in 1928, about 1 year prior to them getting the Stevens scopes, also at this time Stevens had been a fully owned subsidiary of Savage Arms for several years and their product line of scopes had been shrinking. The last Stevens and the Winchesters were all externally adjusted older designs that I think were losing out to the competition, it seems not to make sense for them to buy another line of externally adjusted scopes at that time.
... one of the pictures used looked familiar, right down to all the smudges -
24hourcampfire/re-malcolm-scoped-1899s
