The Bullet:In - From Telescopes to Rifle Scopes; An Early History

As ubiquitous and varied as rifle scopes are today, there was a time when a “Riffle with a Tellescope to it” was quite a sight indeed. Starting with Charles Willson Peale in 1776 and his eye-catching experiments with a rifle telescope, we’ll take a look at the early designers in the field of rifle optics. Also joining the party will be John R. Chapman and Morgan James, the creators of the 1800’s Chapman-James rifle telescope. A mere decade after Chapman-James, we get to meet William Malcolm, one of the most famous names in pre-1900 optics.

While early scopes were plagued with issues (otherwise known as learning experiences), modern scopes draw a vast amount of their design from these simple, early scopes.

From the National Eagle Newspaper of Claremont, New Hampshire, dated October 17th of 1861: “The best marksmen of the state are invited to enlist, after passing a satisfactory examination, and complying with the following test: Each applicant, when firing at a rest with a telescope rifle, at a distance of two hundred yards, to put ten consecutive shots in a target, the average distance not to exceed five inches from the center of the bull’s eye to the center of the ball.”
Do you think you could pass the original sharpshooter test?

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 https://hi-luxoptics.com/blogs/history/from-telescopes-to-rifle-scopes-an-early-history
If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can find it at https://anchor.fm/hi-lux-optics/episodes/From-Telescopes-to-Rifle-Scopes---An-Early-History-e1cjnj2