Next message: Alexandre Eremenko: "Re: SNO sextants"
But the words "Merchant Marine" in Russian have
no letter "M" in them. Neither any synonimous expression
I can think about. Merchant Marine is
"Torgovyi Flot". So this cannot explain the meaning
of the letter M in SNO-M.
I never held a SNO-M in my hands, so I cannot compare.
My impression was that SNO-M is an older model and SNO-T
a newer one.
Sometime in 1930-s or 1940-s they tried to copy a C. Plath
with aluminium frame
(Joel: is it true that all SNO-M's have aluminium frames?)
and then, in 1945 or later they decided that Freiberger design is
better for some reasons (maybe better for aluminium frames?)
maybe took some machinery and/or experts from Germany,
and based their new model on this. There are also rumors
that they used German optics.
I really don't know, these are just speculations.
But I would be very interested to know any details on
their production and problems they confronted.
Someone earlier mentioned in this list that
in 1945 "Soviets plundered the Freiberger factory",
I remember this sentense but cannot find the message.
Interesting, where this information comes from?
Alex.
