Tower Optical's coin-operated binoculars have graced scenic overlooks for 90 years—now you can buy one
The 90-year history of the binoculars bolted to scenic overlooks
Since 1933, Tower Optical has hand-built the chrome-plated binocular viewers bolted to scenic overlooks across North America. The company, which still uses 1930s machinery, is now selling a limited number of refurbished units for around $9,500, complete with original maintenance cards and new optics. With only 1,800 machines still in service, these iconic viewers are becoming collectible pieces of history.
If someone’s interested in the history of a machine, we’ll look at the maintenance cards… For example, machine #507 was manufactured in the 1950s. Our records show it went to the Staten Island Ferry in 1961, Battery Park in New York City in the ’80s, the North Carolina Zoo in the ’90s, and, most recently, Coit Tower in San Francisco.
- ctippett
> Tower Optical began in a Norwalk, Connecticut, machine shop in 1933, and remained in the same family until 2025.
The article doesn't go into too much detail beyond this snippet, but yeah, the original family business was sold to a cohort of investors in 2025[1]. The retrofit was outsourced to a European firm to add the tap-to-pay functionality, so I guess there's nothing left of the original manufacturing business.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/tourist-binocu...
- Mountain_Skies
It's almost an alternate universe reading this as throughout my childhood I noticed all of those coin operated binoculars were manufactured in Fairhope, Alabama. No doubt there were regional preferences for units from one company over the other but I do remember seeing Fairhope originated binoculars in the Midwest and Canada.
- braingravy
Seems like the perfect place to install a credit card scraper… I would not tap anything on that.