Early optical sights for the Lee Enfield

[Surpmil]

This came up in a thread on the Ross rifle forum, but as it relates to the long Lee Enfield, and a lot more, I thought I'd start a thread about it here.

Ian Skennerton referred in his books to Dr. Common's telescopic sight for the Lee Enfield which the latter designed in response to the aiming and sighting problems exposed by the 2nd Boer War. One can see from the photos alone how his design was probably not equalled for compactness until the ZF4 of WWII.

The fully sealed tube, with external adjustments is the same basic design as today's ELCAN. In those days when climate-proofing instruments was very difficult if not impossible, the wisdom of external adjustments only was obvious. And not only climate-proofing, but "soldier-proofing".

The large range dial with markings easily visible and adjusted from the prone position is another innovation not seen again until the No.32 appears in 1940/41, although the Soviet PE scopes incorporated this from the early 1930s.

But Dr. Common was not the only innovator, Sir Howard Grubb patented the first reflector gunsight in 1900, again under the impetus of the problems of directing rifle fire exposed by the Boer War.

His article here describing the invention is a fascinating look forward as he anticipates the purpose of the general use of optical sights on infantry rifles as was perhaps first planned for the Enfield EM2.

It is likely, so far as military interests are concerned, and more particularly as long as our army is recuited as it is at present, that the most suitable system will not be that which will enable a few keen-eyed men, with determined perseverance, to attain a wonderful pitch of perfection [in marksmanship], but on the contrary, the more useful system will be that which will enable the average man, with very little training and practice, to shoot practically as well as the best.

He then goes on to envision what would become laser sights, at a time when lasers were I believe completely unknown:

It would be possible to conceive an arrangement by which a fine beam of light like that from a search-light would be projected from a gun in the direction of its axis, and so adjusted as to correspond with the line of fire, so that wherever the beam of light impinged upon an object, the shot would hit.

[the wikipedia author has mixed this conceptualization up as a description of the functioning of Grubb's reflector sight]

This appears to also be the first known "bifocal" optical sight in which both eyes can be kept open while aiming (assuming normal vision), in contrast to sights such as certain "red-dots" in which the FOV of the aiming eye is obscured and only the superimposition by the brain of the FOV of both eyes produces the image of the aiming mark or reticule on the target. [Another point the wiki article seems confused about]

Dr. Grubb perhaps goes a little overboard in saying that, "it is the only sight that can be used with or without magnifying power", unless telescopes of "0" power were unknown at that time, which seems unlikely.

Of course the position of the light-gathering lens pointing forward at an angle would be likely to reflection giving away the shooter's position, so the vertical orientation as also proposed would have made more sense in the field.

In his last point 10, Grubb anticipates, or perhaps we should say invents, illuminated reticules.

All in all, one is reminded again how slowly innovations are accepted and how quickly forgotten. Dr. Common's sight had apparently been forgotten by WWI when the need for them was far greater than in the Boer War, and Grubb's concept was not brought into RAF service until the 1930s. There are more details about that here.

So, does an example of the Grubb sight exist anywhere today?

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