Germany's WW1 Zeiss Bifocal Scope: the Glasvisier 16
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
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The Zeiss 2.5x Glasvizier 16 optic is one of the most unusual and interesting of the German sighting systems used on rifles during the First World War. It is a bifocal optic, working in the same way as today’s SeeAll optic. Basically, a section of magnifying lens sits in the bottom third of the field of view, which magnifies the huge white triangle that clips over the rifle’s front sight. By lining the tip of this triangle up on your target, you can get a parallax-free sight picture. The front and rear portions are both clip-on and can be removed in seconds, allowing the system to be fielded without needing to permanently convert rifles to a sniper configuration. The system is interesting and does work, but like its SeeAll descendent today, it is not really what someone expects to get from a 2.5s optical sight. I don’t have any data on the number produced or the extent to which they were fielded during the war (although this particular optic is serialized #4807), but I suspect that its unorthodox nature led to a poor reputation amongst troops and a fairly limited field use. Certainly these are one of the rarest f the German WW1 optics, and one would expect to see more surviving if they had been widely used.
Want to try out this sort of optics sight on a gun of your own, without paying the WW1 historical premium? The SeeAll works the same way, and you can find them here: seeallopensigh...
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Very interesting piece of history ! I did some research and it seems the Glasvisier16 was primarily meant to be a "Dämmerungszielhilfe" which would literally translate to something like "dusk or twilight aiming assist". So it was meant to augment aiming in low level light conditions like dusk or full moon nights rather than being used as a magnification scope during daytime in the classical sense. Its even possible that the big entry lense was even treated with phosphor to brighten the image. (Yes, just like with an Acog ;-D ) The white silvery triangle looks very much like old radium paint does once its aged and depleted and lost its radioactive glow. Its easy to find out as you just need to expose it to very bright light, like from a high powered flashlight and then take it into the dark. If its really radium, the photons hitting the paint will reactivate the original green radioactive glow for about a minute or less. Or just hold a geiger counter to it. ;-)
*ian wakes up* "oh my god it's a german ACOG". i chuckled.
"oh my holy father its a german acog"
Don't blasphemy
@@mitchelreimer7095 Blaspheme
😂
@@roempoetliar7995🤦🏻♂️
Sees thumbnail
Omg it's a German acog
Start of the video
Omg it's a German acog
Damn right
hahaha had the exact same thought
But it isn't German ACOG....
Actually, I think it is pretty close to an ACOG in they way it seems it was intended to be used. No magnification of the target seems to indicate this was not for "sniping" or long-range accuracy. It looks like it's better at getting a quick sight picture and laying the rifle on a target within normal eyesight range (up to 250-300m).
But it is still not a ACOG. Looks like it yeah... but still isn't.
Had the same thought when I saw the thumbnail! "WW1 Acog?!?!" LOL
Pretty funny. I can lean out the window and see the factory where these time travelling ACOG could have been built. Greetings from Jena, Germany.
Ach dann sind wir quasi Nachbarn.
Grüße aus Erfurt :D
Und Weimar :D Jetzt sind wir Thüringer komplett ;-)
@@AndreaLudwigDesign Thüringen. Wer kennt es nicht, drei Städte und sonst NICHTS... XDXD
Zeitz ist auch am Start xD
Grüße.
Egomania 27 oh, noch eener aus Jena :D
Forgotten weapons is, and has, always been better thought of as ‘fascinating weapons’
Forgotten weapons and forgotten weapon accessories
@Andrei S Weapons Related
Agreed.
@@ohy2266 Thank you doctor
Absolutely
Since it doesn't magnify the target it seems less like a sniper scope and more like a primitive red dot or reflex sight.
ww1 combat ranges weren't all that far away though in some regions.
Maybe more of a "sharpshooter" or "designated marksman" over a proper sniper.
It's 2.5x
@@AG.Floats It isn't though. The part of the glass which you observe the target with it not magnified at all. the magnification is only looking at the front sight triangle thing.
@@grumples1517 would still be better than iron sight
Please make a video about the German WWII infrared night vision device FG 1250.
This exact optic is why i watch your channel, i never heared of this thing but i'm glad that you took the time and explained it to us.
All hail Ian, our one and only gun Jesus XD.
same here
Acoog
yes
Id contact zeiss to service it lol!
Jonathan Meray given enough money they probably would.
Hahaha
What causes the fogging on the glass? Was there a coating that degraded?
@@OreoBambino Wow, thanks for all the great info! I'm getting my first scope soon. Good stuff to know.
Zeiss may still have the production information that Ian has not found.
i want my f&^$# scope warrantied the blasted thing fogged up after a hundred years. they said it would last forever!
Jäger and bandit would be proud
They should have added this for the Jager elite skin
Oh wait
@@AKK5I shieße
@@ruskibot7745 exactly
@@ruskibot7745 So people can be toxic and spawn peek again?
Haggis442312 Who said you couldn’t spawnpeek with a holo? :)
Sehr wunderschön! I love it. I'll take two.
@Titan Mechanism Not commenting on the "very wonderful"? :'D
Its either 'Wunderschön' or 'Sehr schön' but not 'Sehr Wunderschön'
@@IR4TE What if I was trying to say very, very beautiful.
Everybody gets what you want to get across, the german correction squad just visited :)
@@KrisKrieg1 If you want so say very, very beautiful it would be sehr, sehr schön.
Carl Zeiss makes fantastic optics & have been doing so, for over 100 years.
That scope was incredibly ahead of its time.
Can we Get MRE Jesus (Steve1989) and Gun Jesus to do a collab?
Forgotten MRE's
@@LtDan2K Which have been meant to be forgotten. No. 9 Chicken a la King.
NICE!
Please try to find more odd, rare or antique optics! Really interesting stuff!
The mount is a really cool and kinda good idea.
"It's a german ACOG"
Jäger will remember this.
Very interesting little scope! Thanks Ian
During the cold war the Bundeswehr used a similar system. Selected G3 rifles where fitted with a matched quick detachable 4x scope and handed out to a class of shooters called Präzisionsschütze (precision shooter). They are not snipers, but better then average marksmen. And to avoid them being treated like snipers in case they where captured, they where instructed to detach the scope and throw it away if needed.
Huh
Any pictures of their scopes or the word(s) to Google it?
Looks like a german time traveller took a sniper from pubg and came back and made it not look suspicious
Carl Zeiss manufactures the best optics. For good reason, Sony chose them for their Alpha series of DSLR and later mirrorless cameras. They just introduced their first camera ever, a full-frame 35mm fixed lens camera the Zeiss ZX1, to be released next year.
@Howard Black good stuff!
Thats aint Sony it's Minolta Sony bought Minolta division for cameras back in 2002 and Alphas are Minolta just rebranded with new name. With new name I mean Sony because Alpha name comed from Minolta
:OOOO What if, get this... what if the Z in ZF-41 stood for Zeiss :OOOOO
I like the elcon 1x and 4x with a switch. Because in military service its really good for urban room clearing because at 1x it's like a red dot but with a crosshair and then its a 4x when you have mountain to mountain shooting or when you clear a house and the terrorists run out the back door and they get 200 meters away you can flip the switch to 4x line them up and pop. Right in the spine.
Loved that intro. Defs some of your best acting to date Ian 😆
FYI: The Z is sharp and the J is like a Y, so it's pronounced like Carl Tsaiss Yena.
I am glad that Ian mentioned SeeAll sight - it has a very good potential to replace those flip up backup sights. Honestly, those SeeAll sights are rather overpriced here in Europe compared to what it costs over there.
Is it strange just to have a private playlist with all the Forgotten weapons video's you just want to watch again because you found the things in them way too cool?
Nope
A small note on your pronunciation of german words, Ian: the city of Jena is pronounced "yehna", with an emphasis on the elongated "e". There's no connection whatsoever with the Kardashians ;)
No connection that you of.😂
Now thats a cool scope.
I read about this some years ago, but never understand that was not a "real" 2,5× scope. Very fascinating.
It does look like an ACOG. Zeiss makes some of the highest quality scopes i have every used for hunting. I just wish that i could afford one, way out of my price range. Thanks for showing this awesome scope an the knowledge too.
Yeah, my uncle who's basically a professional hunter bought my dad a pair for some work he did a while back. My dad loves them but there's no way he would've dropped $1,000+ on one himself
They're binoculars though, not scope. Still expensive though
I had a 1956 ZF-4 made in Jena, Eastern Germany. It was essentially the same as the war time ZF-4s that were put on Kar 98s. I bought it because it was only 35 dollars (converted) and i always liked the reticle. I was planning to put it on my airsoft gun. It was obscenely heavy by modern standards and in order to mount, it would require me to buy a custom made adapter for a picatinny rail which would cost twice as much as the scope itself. I ended up not using it and selling it for 50 dollars (converted), making a neat little profit. Despite its shortcomings compared to modern scopes, i can vouch for one thing. The glass was _very_ clear with no noticeable distortion. Definitely top quality for the time.
I would assume the eye cup was for the duel purpose of having a telescope type of device and also a scope.
dat carl he was so zeiss ahead of his visier
I'd totally send that back to Zeiss for refurbishment so I could use it.
I wonder if Zeiss would service that sight if it were sent to them today? Would be cool if they did.
The Zeiss company is very good at serving anything that is there product I think that getting it to them and back would be the most expensive aspect.
That Jena city mispronunciation :) Say "Yena"
We won the war and will call it Jena😉
@@stuartjohns2779 shut up, stinkender Plutokrat!
Interesting apparatus! Could someone clarify that is it only meant to magnify your sights so it's easier to line up the shot? Since the upper part isn't magnified, only the lower part for the sights. Or am I missing something?
Yes it was designed to magnify the front sight post.
Thank you for the replies fellas!
Rapid target acquisition.
Literally the same as a red dot haha.
It WAS a sniper sight at the time but they were using 3x optics which our standard infantry rifles can have today. And this sight in particular has no magnification.
Peter the Peter it’s literally the same in function not form.
Rapid Target Aquisition
An open sight picture
That’s literally what a red dot is.
You can do something similar with AA sights for mgs
What do you mean ‘why would you want to magnify the front post/ triangle?’?
That’s literally how the optic works. That triangle point is much finer and accurate(if dialed) than a front post of an iron sight. It also allows much easier tracking of a moving target past 100 yards(there’s no rear sight getting in your POV.
It’d probably be more accurate than a cheap modern Reddot but be more difficult to sight in on target. But this is WW2 and most snipers wouldn’t like carrying a battery pack for a real(bad) red dot.
It seriously is the direct predecessor to the see all sight.it works on the same concept. They are a great sight and work really well as soon as you stop thinking of it as a red dot and more of improved irons.I use a see all ( delta aperture ) on my comp shotgun and the crosshair style reticle offset on my ar10.the concept is so simple but the engineering is where people can't wrap there heads around it.they see something on top of a rifle and they immediately think it's supposed to be a scope( just like Ian said" a german acog...a german acog").
Ps.the seealls are cheap and if you know what your doing you can easily instal tritium vials in the standard sight and save $100 and Its more compact.
The Germans 104 years ago could give a Mauser rifle a ACOG sight and yet they can’t give Jagar’s ACOG back
Ah so this is where COD Vanguard got their ideas from
Liked for the opening sentence alone! Haven't even watched the rest yet...
Does the rear rollercoaster site still move? Is the scope adjustable for range using the rear site?
Good question, I wondered myself what range it would be zeroed for.
i like this a lot easy and simple
Ian McCollum, king of gun nerds! My favorite channel on UA-cam
That’s actually really cool!
The yee old ACOG
The original designated marksman. I saw somewhere that the US military is looking for a new SMG. Seems like they are going back to the late WWII German multiple small arms arrangement.
Like the clip-on action. "It's dangerous out there, take this." and off to war.
Looks like another example of German military engineering. They first developed something that was good idea but for some reason didn't work for them and years later other countries made some improvements and made it their next big thing. Just like with rockets, jet planes, assault rifles, main battle tanks.
Or computers. Look up Zuse 1
Knowing the Zeiss company I would have to guess that it was too expensive.
Omnius Prime tanks were made first in Britain. Britain thought tanks weren't an effective tool of warfare and ignored them largely until Germany took them and made them into a main part of their warfare tactics.
It is of course true tanks were first made by Britain, but I'm thinking about idea of universal MBT. As first ones people usually consider post war T54, Canturion and Patton, but Panther can also fit the general idea.
I don't disagree UK had jet ideas earlier than Germany, but it was just ideas, patents and experimental engine. He 178 was the first aircraft that flew with jet engine and Me 262 the first jet fighter that entered military service.
@Edohiguma The Panther wasn't garbage per se, once the early design errors had been worked out, but it suffered enormously from lack of the high precision parts it needed, such as bearings, gaskets, lubricants, etc.
أحسنت النشر عزيزي ايان
That Sir, is awesome!
Was the cutout for on the optic mounting platform for the adjustment of the range on the irons? Additionally, is that sight capable of using the range adjustments?
Great video. Can you do a video on your cobray m11a1?
Arguing the evidence of absence of evidence is a tough one. I can't argue with the logic though.
It stands to reason, if it was a popular, effective system, then it would stand to reason it would appear in documentation. Either in TO&E lists, in the developmental material, in the training manuals, in the doctrine.
If it's not in any of those and the numbers of items is so hard to verify, it can't have been produced in large numbers.
I love the comparison with the See-All Sight!! I have one on my AK and I've always found it to be an interesting optic
I ought to get one for my savage 99. The front sight went awol on me over the past 12 years
@@elijahaitaok8624 they're good quick target sights, but don't offer much in the way of magnification
@@trevillyan5515 I wouldn't mind the lack of magnification, where I live the caribou can be just behind a hill, so a quick acquisition would be much appreciated
Oh ok perfect then man, you can't beat the price point on them either
@@trevillyan5515 80 bucks CAD for good sights is like a wet dream
00:21 Almost, ian.
It is actually a "Karl Tsaiss" with a really sharpy and pronounced "Ts" at the beginning of "Tsaiss".
Is it certain that it was intended to be a sniper scope? It seems strange that the main lens has no magnification. It would make more sense as a general battle scope meant to replace the iron sights. The simple nature of the system would be good for quick sight pictures at short ranges. I can't imagine it being good for long range sniping since you didn't mention it having any wind or height adjustments. Or does it use the ladder of the iron sights for that?
I don't really get the point here. I do understand why you might want something akin to a reflex sight for quick aiming at close range but that thing is meant for sniping and yet it lacks magnification and the field of view is very limited.
Carl Zeiss Jena *_*
I love seeing the classic Zeiss lense logo
so, this is like the grandfather of ACOG , but instead of the high and clear zoom, it just magnify the iron sight ? Consider the time period, it is a good scope....
Is the front sight luminous like the Leuchtsvisierung (aka Radium Sights for the G98)?
You can try to disassemble the scope and remove the haze. Probably this is fungus, so you can easily find a lot of ways how to remove it.
Probably any qualified photo camera technician could clean the lenses of that scope
What would be really really cool is if the future owner were to offer to loan it to Othais and Mae for a special episode of C&Rsenal.
I wonder if these stopped production due to material shortages. I mean sniper scopes are never easy to mass produce, and maybe Germany wanted to prioritize actual sniper scopes instead of these infantry sights
love how you speak the german words
Based on the replacement front sight (functioning as the reticle) I wonder if this was intended as a low-light or night sight.
Interesting... I have a set of WWI Zeiss infantry binoculars, 4X iirc. Zeiss: Quality optics that can take a beating.
Is it just me or is Ian using the phrase "Higher tolerance" incorrectly in the video ? To me higher tolerance means it is more accommodating to errors - less precise ? Or is it just me misunderstanding ?
Pre-Jeff Cooper scout rifle?
Would it be possible or even worth the possible damage it could receive to try and have this restored by some optics company?
Only if you have the Zeiss company do the restoration.
I think they worked great, but at the end of the war they had recourse problems. So maybe that's why they stopped with it.
Is the front triangle luminous painted with tritium? (obviously it would be long dead but it looks like it)
Mongo63a probably would be radium back then.
Tritium is a gas, you can't really paint it on... it would be radium.
@@etelmo I guess all of the current tritium night iron sights are all bogus then.
@@neroxen_ aren't those contained in a tiny cylindrical tube?
@@neroxen_ They all use tritium vials... it's a gas inside a vial, with the inside of the vial coated with a phosphor...
It's German ACOG, it isn't a German ACOG, but it is a German ACOG, it even has 2.5x power! （sad Jäger noise
Ive tried to look up the company that makes the current optics with no results. Did he say seal, ceal, zeal? Id like to look into them especially if they really are cheap.
I can't imagine that spring clip mounting system retaining zero. It was probably rated for minute of pie plate accuracy. I bet it was fast into action though.
Probably not the most stable but also IMO probably not bad enough to be a big problem at the ranges it was used
Does the Lonfviser(sp?) distances still apply then? I would think they would.
This is what my primary arms 2.5x ACSS reticle scope would’ve looked like 100 years ago🧐
So theres the vanguard g16 sight
Perfect for quickscope action
I was hoping you would do this! I've been obsessed with this scope after seeing it in DOI's Screaming Steel mod.
i thought he might actually take the optics apart - but nevertheless, still love the content. keep up the good work! never gets old/boring!
Gently tiger striped G98... Plus Acog 😯🌟
Does the range have to be set at a specific spot, to index the scope?
What a clever and cool device, really nice craftsmanship too from the look. Great video as always, Ian!
Who seen the reflection of the camera and thought it was a red dot?
Call of Duty Vanguard Sniper!?
What show is this, who is this guy, and where the hell is he? If only someone could tell me
Looks like a Kar from PUBG now...
Does it matter what range the standard sight is set to when mounting and using the scope?
Has anyone here used a Seeall sight? What did you think of it?
God damn I love German over-engineering.
Zeiss is producing some of the best lenses up to this day. Ranging from cameras to rifle optics and medical gear.
I really wonder for what distance the Glasvisier was intended, like, whats the zeroing on the thing? If it would be lower then the 200m default on the G88 for example, I could really see the benefit in a real life scenario.
not a nativ tongue so i wonder. he said, high tolerance in context of the rear side block. but he talked about t he more precise ones. shouldn´t it mean low tolerance? i am translating from german, and a small tolerance, means a low number of mm that it is allowed to be away from the ideal size. a high tolerance means you have more space you can be away from the ideal size. a low tolerance means it has to be pretty precise. not smartassing, just a honest question.
Perhaps he meant to say tight tolerance, your point is correct.
Oddly enough I was just looking at a See All sight because they were on sale for black Friday. Anyone have any personal experience with them? If it matters I was thinking of using it on a range gun at first at least.
I want one too, their demo vid seems pretty convincing enough to throw money at them to get one.
Honestly I thought it was going to expand like a spyglass with all the ridges on the rear.
Never seen one.never expected on 8mm IS very modern for old ww2
Would it be possible to clean this sight up? It seems extremely solid and screwed together rather than riveted. Maybe you would need to send the lenses to be polished?
That's like refinishing a stock, the future owner will probably put this in a glass case and never look through it.
Interesting stuff. Yep! Kind of Acog ancestor...
Isn't 'low tolerance' better than 'high tolerance'? :P