Post American Civil War the major improvements in telescopic
rifle sights seems to have migrated to Europe .
Two companies stand out in the early development of a more practical riflescope. Around 1846 Carl Zeiss began grinding optical lenses for telescopes and
integrating them into smaller telescopic sights to be mounted on a rifle. By
1892 Zeiss had a “workable” rifle scope – which would be considered bulky and
awkward by any hunter today. Simultaneously Karl Robert Kahles, Simon Plassl
and Karl Fritch (Opto-Mechanical Co.) were grinding telescopic lenses and
working on “rifle telescopic sights” It is interesting to note that in spite of
the devastating psychological effect of “sniping” in the ACW – most European
armies believed in iron sights on military firearms.
In 1898 K. R. Kraals, S. Plash, and Opto-Mechanical merged
to form Kahles Company which would along with Zeiss become a force in the
development of rifle scopes as we know them today. By the beginning of the
outbreak of WWI these two companies had control of practically the entire
production of high-grade optical lenses of a size small enough to be used in a
rifle mounted telescopic sight. Which resulted in one of the most bizarre trade
agreements of the century; it seems that through their colonial holdings that Britain controlled the vast majority of rubber
exported to Europe . But the British made
practically no optical lenses, while the Germans made the finest optics in the
world at the time.
Although there was a trade embargo between both countries
and their allies at the time; it appears that Britain obtained an exchange
through Switzerland of some 10,000 lenses needed for telescopes, binoculars and
rifle scopes and Germany got rubber – which went into tires for military transport
trucks. So eventually British Snipers shot at German soldiers with German
scopes while those soldiers rode to the trenches on British tires.
And so it begins...the use of precision aiming to hit specific
long distance targets.
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