WW1 'Periscope Prism company' sniper scope???

[Roger Payne]

Morning D! Some fascinating material there.

I see your point about the patent issue/marking with the 'modified PPCo/Bartle?' dovetail rings fitted to the Aldis scopes with prism modification, but under wartime pressure who knows....... I think one could just as easily argue it either way with equal conviction, especially if PPCo contracted out the work to someone else who felt no great ownership of the product. Incidentally, I have stumbled across an old photocopy of Patent 3027 of February 1915 for the the dovetail mount system of PPCo., but there is no mention of a J Bartle, I'm afraid. The PPCo are referred to as 'manufacturing opticians' & the only person mentioned by name is the familiar A B Rolfe Martin, who is described as 'engineer'.

With you in your comments on the 4th Patterns being fitted with prisms (I have only ever seen one that wasn't & I am pretty sure that one was a post war mix & match affair - I'd be fascinated to know if you've seen any military 4th Patt scopes without prism facility that you think have always been like that), & that being indicative of use on a non-windage adjustable mount system. It all makes sense. From your observations & spread sheet are you suggesting that the SMLE/Aldis/Modded PPCo/Bartle?? mount system appeared later than might have been up to now suspected?

Concerning the Aldis with over bore claw 'Enfield designed' type mounts for the SMLE. Agreed, surviving examples suggest marking was patchy, but it is certain that a proportion were. My own set isn't but whilst finished, the rings were never fitted to a scope. We know that in principle some of these mount systems were marked & the two I have photographs of clearly show a date of 1919. We do not know exactly when PPCo were taken over by the government, but one could speculate that it was late & that this mount system may even have been part way through its production run at the time. Maybe when the PPCo lost its 'independence' & just became another government facility it was considered unnecessary to mark them?? I really don't know, but again, could that be possible? One should also perhaps bear in mind that the Allies were still on a war footing until the Treaty Of Versailles was signed in June 1919, the Armistice being exactly that....an armistice.

Re the 18/10/16 order, yes, that is why I added the rider about no further qualification. Aldis became heavily involved in making sights for fighter aircraft, among other things, as the war progressed. Yet another question to muse over is whether Aldis really did stop production by the end of 1916 or shortly thereafter; whether they had got ahead of themselves & had a plentiful supply of components to continue assembly of instruments; or whether manufacture continued after but they never troubled to amend the date beyond 1916......

Addendum. I've just had another rummage through some 'archived' (that's a somewhat fanciful description) papers & found among them the sheet containing the SAC minutes from 27/08/17 in which the then under development P'14 sniper's rifle was the subject of discussion. It would seem that at this stage there was still some debate as to whether the the new scope & mount system would incorporate a prism for lateral adjustment or use the German system with the adjustment on the mount (we touched on this earlier in this thread). There seems to be perhaps a leaning towards the prism, & it is mentioned in the text to the effect that no telescopes had been so far fitted with prisms, but that 315 had had the (prism) cell fitted, & that the installation of the prism was not considered a major problem should it be decided to proceed with this system following evaluation of the new rifles in France. It at least gives us a 'baseline date' before which we can probably reasonably conclude there were no prism fitted third or fourth pattern Aldis scopes (unless it refers only to no scopes having been modified for the prism from a quantity of scopes set aside with the intention of fitting them to the P'14, specifically!). This, I admit, sits a little awkwardly when one considers that the Aldis with 'Bartle? mount' contracts are about ten months earlier.......though if there were lengthy delays from contract to implementation, the presumed Bartle mounts in consort with prism fitted Aldis scopes could still be compatible, although the prism would have needed to have been under discussion & assessed as feasible to fit for a while. Unless anyone knows differently....?!%$?

Plus of course, the contract details are not complete..........so you could say we're not playing with a full deck!

My brain hurts too