You don't have be sorry when you're wrong.
Due to the tapering of the barrels, it appears there's actually
more room for the user's fingers than a typical open bridge roof, and
way more room than some open bridge roofs such as the Minox BP with its big blocky bridges.
I bet Dobler or whoever it was who thought he came up with the idea for an open bridge roof for the EL had knowledge of these binoculars. Like the EL, it has two bridges, one near the EPs and one near the objectives, and an open space for the fingers to wrap around the barrels. The most convincing evidence of the Zeiss Septar's paternity can be found in the original EL prototype you posted.
Technically, it might be a misnomer to call it an "open bridge" because of the center post (which the short-lived Nikon Monarch X also had), but it provided the prototype for the design of the Zeiss 7x42 Dialyt, and its post-free variant, the EL, and the three-bridge mutation, the SF.
On our next show, we'll be talking about the history of human/animal hybrids, the first of which was J. Edgar Hoover.
Which one's Hoover?
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