GoKawiilIf you’ve ever stood on an observation platform at Niagara Falls, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, chances are pretty good you’ve seen a Tower Optical binocular viewer, and maybe even dropped a quarter into one, even if you’ve never heard of the company that made it.
These heavy, chrome-plated viewers are bolted to observation decks and overlooks across the US and Canada. But somewhere along the way, the viewers themselves became icons. And, for the first time in its history, the company is selling a small number of them to private buyers.
Tower Optical began in a Norwalk, Connecticut, machine shop in 1933, and remained in the same family until 2025. Between the 1930s and 1980s, it manufactured roughly 2,000 of the machines, with every component hand-assembled in the company’s factory in Norwalk, where the original machinery from the 1930s and 40s still stands. Today, the company has about 1,800 machines spread across roughly 400 locations in North America.
Tower Optics binocular viewfinders have been deployed to all corners of North America, in all types of environments. Tower Optical
In many places, these viewers have become part of the landscape as much as a means of viewing it. As someone with an interest in optics, what’s always fascinated me are the conditions these devices endure: freezing winters, blistering summers, rain, snow, ice, sand and every other environmental hazard you can throw at them. Yet the 10×42 binoculars inside keep delivering a sharp image, decade after decade.
Adam Rice, one of the company’s current owners, says the location and history of every viewer has been meticulously tracked by hand, decade after decade, as they moved around the continent.