Rangefinders

[Denis]

You probably see construction workers using these on road construction sites -- a tripod mounted total station aimed at a corner reflector on another tripod. I don't believe these can get a range to a non-reflecting surface at 5000m.

Well, the German army-surplus retail site I linked to lists "3 reflectors" as part of the kit, so you may well be right... I suppose the full specifications would be available from Zeiss. I just looked up "rangefinder" (Entfernungsmessgeraet)on the government surplus auctions page, but I know nothing about them other than that's what they call these items.

[D5CAV]

They have the Carl Zeiss-Jena Rangefinder · Observation Binocular EM-61-P on sale for $489 regular $899--4mm exit pupil, effective range of 400-18,000m, accurate to 10cm @ 3,000M...You can have hours of fun up on the hillside with this rangefinder; even more if you can hook up with a small field piece, like an Italian 70mm…Total weight is 121 lbs!

The Carl Zeiss-Jena Rangefinder/ Observation Binocular OEM-2 for $1,999.00 weighs in with accessories 80KG (176 lbs) and the tripod is another 18KG (41lbs) and I've read elsewhere that it's accurate to 30cm @ 5km (about a foot)

Check under Precision Instruments

I've lusted after both of these items for awhile. Not very useful, but a beautiful set of opto-mechanical devices that will never be made again. I have an old Wild Theodolite that I paid a few hundred for (cost about $10,000 new in 1975 dollars) that fits in the same category. The theodolite sits in my garage, which, given the utility of the OEM-2 or the EM-61, is where these two items would end up, and $2K is a lot of scratch to just leave in the garage.

Furthermore, the Wild theodolite weighs about 10 pounds in the 'bullet' case and each of these weighs over 100 pounds! Shipping for either of these monsters would be over $100. I love the 'backpack' feature for carrying the OEM-2 up mountains. I'm not sure I could carry that thing up a mountain when I was 20yrs old -- I can forget it now.