Telescopic sight
sighting device for firearms, with either fixed or variable magnification.
A telescopic sight, commonly called a scope informally, is an optical sighting device based on a refracting telescope. Sights are equipped with a referencing pattern (reticle) mounted in a focally appropriate position in its optical system to provide an accurate point of aim. Telescopic sights are classified in terms of the optical magnification (power) and the objective lens diameter.
The first experiments directed to give shooters optical aiming aids go back to the early 17th century. For centuries, different optical aiming aids and primitive predecessors of telescopic sights were created that had practical or performance limitations. Most early telescopic sights were fixed-power and were in essence specially designed viewing telescopes. Telescopic sights with variable magnifications appeared later, and were varied by manually adjusting a zoom mechanism behind the erector lenses. Other types of scopes include prism sights and low-power variable optics.
Telescopic sights have both advantages and disadvantages relative to iron sights. They are built to various specifications and use a variety of adjustment controls, reticles, features, technologies, and mounting systems.
“Telescopic sight” enters the record as sighting device for firearms, with either fixed or variable magnification. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Telescopic, sight and sighting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q198982. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Telescopic sight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.