Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/05/22

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Subject: [Leica] Red dots.
From: lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 12:38:26 -0400

I'm not sure which Leicas were the first to sport red dots. All I know is
that Leica fans made fun of them as useless decorations when they first came
out. Sort of like earrings on a pig. And the Leica company didn't treat them
as a big deal either.

I recall visiting the Leica headquarters in New Jersey to get my M3
rangefinder aligned. Those were the days when Leica service was very good.
While I waited for the technician to do it, I had a chat with the manager. I
asked about the red dots.

"Would you like a couple?" he asked. He reached into his desk drawer and
pulled out a roll of metallic red dots with adhesive on the back, tore off a
strip of four or five, and handed them to me. Red dots were everywhere then.
I bought a set of Trinovid binoculars and there were red dots both on the
glasses and on the plastic case they came in. I have a red dot on my old
Leica Digilux Zoom (ne Fuji), a 1.3 megapixel wonder.

It wasn't until just a couple of years ago that red dots became object of
desire.

Larry Z