Anyone ever seen one of these rangefinders?

[Wolfdog91]

 

[Cbashooter]

Ah the old original parallax style. Remember back when I was in high school these were popular with archery hunters. Is there were the shorter range versions of course. There was a Swiss one that was on the surplus market a number of years ago that worked with the same principle and were quite high quality. I would have to Google the name of them in order to find it. Also we Barr and Stroud I think was a us version. Again this is all memory Google not involved I'm sure somebody will correct me on spellings and exact names

 

[jghoghunter]

Thanks for making me feel old. I had one of them that worked to 1000yards in the early 80's. There was 2 images and you turned the wheel till they were one and then read the yardage. Simple worked decent.

 

[rjtfroggy]

I had one back in the mid 70's, bought it from Cabela's when they were catalog mail order only. I have no idea where it is now.

 

[boltfluter]

I have one of the "Wild brand" ones from Switzerland. Zeiss glass throughout. Two images opposed to each other. It is a beautiful piece of engineering and bound in leather. Ranges to 15,000 meters in any conditions. A piece of history from the 70's.
Paul

 

[outasite`08]

Thanks for making me feel old. I had one of them that worked to 1000yards in the early 80's. There was 2 images and you turned the wheel till they were one and then read the yardage. Simple worked decent.

Hey Jesse, Did you buy yours at my shop in T-ville. I sold them but don`t remember who to. I had mine until yard sale in 2010. Worked good. Jeff

 

[jghoghunter]

I was thinking Jeff that I did buy that from you!

 

[OMW57]

YEP, USED 1 BACK IN THE 80'S BOWHUNTING, THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

 

[ACF]

A friend had one of these small/short ones and we could not get it to work very well, but the longer Wilds and the Barr and Stroud should work a lot better.

Chris

 

[SSL]

I had one of those back in the 80s. Worked fairly well, but a little fussy to use. Also saw one that a guy made for himself. That thing was weird. He designed it for range-finding based on triangulation. Mounted two identical scopes on a six foot board. One was permanently fixed to not move. The other one was mounted so it could rotate with a "pointer" aligned with a series of yardage markers. The idea was to center the distant object with the fixed scope (vertical line used only), turn the movable one until it was centered too and then read the pre-marked yardage markers jotted on the board. Of course the board needed to be absolutely at right angles to the object being measured and it had to be "calibrated" at various distances beforehand. More than a just a little clumsy, nor something you could carry in the field and accuracy depended on it being absolutely square and level to the target, but he was proud of it.

 

[troupe]

Do remember from back in the day. They did not do to well on the small groundhogs targets. It is great to see it though and bring back the memories. Have we come a long way for sure. Thanks for posting.

 

[Bocephus]

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Dang, I’d reckon!
Awhile back I found mine still in the original box. Maybe donate it to a museum in a few years!

 

[Coyotefurharvester]

Have the Ranging 400, before the laser Bushnell 400 hit the market, in the winter for coyote and fox the Ranging worked well enough. Still have both, the early 90's Bushnell is still used for setting targets.

 

[painter]

I had one that worked better than guessing, also one for bow hunting that is in the boxes in the basement.

 

[MikeT49]

Kinda knocks the cobwebs outa the memory attic. Very useful tool back in the day for bow hunting. Better than a SWAG. Can't shoot vertical bows anymore. I have a Oracle X scope on my crossbow. It has a built in laser with angle compensation. We have come a long way indeed.

 

[Laurie]

Thanks for making me feel old. I had one of them that worked to 1000yards in the early 80's. There was 2 images and you turned the wheel till they were one and then read the yardage. Simple worked decent.

A scaled down, and no doubt simplified man-portable version of the naval optical rangefinders that were used on warships during the first half of the 20th century before radar ranging / gun control replaced them. Invented by a remarkable USN officer called Bradley A. Fiske in the late 19th Century, they allowed the increasingly long-range guns on large warships to be aimed accurately. I assume land-based artillery also used them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_A._Fiske

The principles and 'bits & pieces' are shown in this article here:

https://www.mathscinotes.com/2013/08/battleship-rangefinders-and-geometry/

As you can see in the explanation/description, the home-made kit that @SSEL describes in an earlier post used precisely the same optical and mechanical principles allied to basic trigonometry.

I too can remember this type of a tube with a fixed lens at one end and rotatable lens at the other being available as a surplus military item many years ago back in the 80s or early 90s, possibly ex Swiss Army. Even as surplus the vendor wanted serious money for them. Laser rangefinders might have been available to the military by then, but it was certainly well before they became available to the general public. (I seem to remember too, early laser models being marketed primarily to golfers rather than shooters.)

 

[Wellington]

I had one for archery back in the early eighties. Lord that feels like a life time ago.

 

[Big Mc]

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Used one of them in Viet Nam back in 1966. Worked pretty well. Tommy Mc