BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kevin Purcell" data-source="post: 1353238" data-attributes="member: 68323">I would doubt anyone them publish much (I haven't seen much but I don't get a big chance to look). Most of the technology in binoculars/spotters is "well understood" from the optical science point of view. A real innovation may appear there but they are few an far between (phase compensation in 1966 was the last one, I think).Perhaps a good bet would be to find review papers (that summarize the published literature not tell you how well a product works) that give you an overall view of the field.But today a optics textboook is perhaps the most likely to give you the details you want (and some of the "known" technical background).Most of the work in both of these fields are in design (enclosure, baffling, mechanical design) or engineering (product or production) or in tweaking known processes (developing new variants on phase coatings or AR coatings).Another good area to look is patents ... Google Patents makes it easy (easier <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> ) to find patents for current and recent products. If a company does something novel in design, engineering or production you are more likely to see it in a patent than in a journal. For example you can find the Bushnell Rainguard patents (but remeber that binoculars are "binocular telescopes" or "telescopes" and marketing/brands are not mentioned).And always remember some some issues are "trade secrets": they're not published and it's made clear to the employees that the process or method or composition is a trade secret and not to be disclosed. I suspect this is less used to day as reverse engineering (even things like layer composition in AR or phase coatings) is "easy". Those reverse engineer-able things should be protected with patents were possible.</blockquote>

Verification