A good sight better

Now commonplace on sporting rifles, modern scopes trace their origins back to Colonel David Davidson, an innovative sportsman and soldier, says Mark Murray-Flutter

-  Mark Murray-Flutter

TODAY MOST sporting rifles are fitted with or at least are capable of being fitted with a telescopic sight, but that was not the case in the 19th century. The Royal Armouries' collection has three examples of one of the earliest telescopic sights: the Davidson telescopic sight, invented and patented by Colonel David Davidson.

One of the first attempts to create such a sight was in 1776 when Charles Willson Peale collaborated with David Rittenhouse in the USA to mount a telescope to a rifle as a sighting aid. However, they were unable to mount it sufficiently far forward to prevent the eyepiece impacting with the operator's eye during recoil, so it would be another half-century before the first viable scope hit the market in the 1830s to 1840s. For the British that meant the Davidson sight.